JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 



JAMAICA AS IT IS, 
1903 



Y 



BY 



B) PULLEN-BURRY 

ACTHOR OF "NOBLY WON." "THE PURITAN'S CCRSE, ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 



LONDON 

T. FISHER UNWIN 

PATERNOSTER SQUARE 

1903 



Fists 



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" There are two oriflammes ; which shall we plant on the 
furthest islands ? — the one that floats in heavenly fire, or that 
which hangs heavy with foul tissue of terrestrial gold ? " 

— KUSKIN. 



PREFACE. 

In presenting this work to the British public it is 
proposed to bring before the notice of those un- 
acquainted with the charms of tropical scenery some 
of the features which tend to make one of our oldest 
colonies, Jamaica, a delightful winter resort. 

At present, it is visited mostly by Americans, 
because of its easy accessibility from New York, 
Boston, and Philadelphia. Their unanimous verdict 
is that there is no lovelier spot under the sun 
than this gem of the Antilles set in the midst of 
the waters of the Caribbean Sea. 

The historical interest is sufficient to attract the 
student, while the artistic sense is constantly charmed 
by the exquisite colouring of the tropical seas, the 
delicious green of the waving cane-fields, the lofty 
mountains with their ofttimes mist-wreathed summits. 

The illustrations of island scenery are by Dr 
Witney of East Street, Kingston, Jamaica. 

In compiling this book the writer is indebted to 



x PEEFACE 

the courtesy of Mr Frank Cundall, who placed the 
old histories of the colony, which are kept in the 
Jamaica Institute, at her disposal ; also to the Arch- 
bishop of the West Indies for the information His 
Grace was good enough to give her, concerning the 
Disestablishment of the Church of England in 
Jamaica. 

B. PULLEN-BUKKY. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

MANDEVILLE — JAMAICA NOT NEAR THE VOLCANOES- 
BOOKS ON THE WEST INDIES . . 



CHAPTER II 

THE DIRECT LINE — THE LAZINESS OF THE NEGRO- 
FELLOW-PASSENGERS ON THE PORT ANTONIO . 



CHAPTER III 

THE KESWICK DELEGATES — MISS SARAH WALKER — 

HAYTIAN CANNIBALISM 15 



CHAPTER IV 

THE BLACK UNDER BRITISH RULE — THE GOVERNOR OF 

JAMAICA AND SUITE 26 



CHAPTER V 

LAND SWALLOWS — TURKS ISLANDS — AN EARTHQUAKE 

SHOCK — CONSTANT SPRING HOTEL . . . . 31 

xi 



xii CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VI 



PAGE 



SUITABLE CLOTHING— PEDESTRIANS IN JAMAICA— SELF- 
HELP SOCIETY 46 



CHAPTER VII 

dominica's flourishing condition — scotch dinner 

— tropical vegetation 58 



CHAPTER VIII 

SAVINGS BANKS — KESWICK VIEWS — SPANISH TOWN . 67 



CHAPTER IX 

THE ROYAL MAIL COMPANY — THE " MUMPISH MELAN- 
CHOLY" OF JAMAICA 77 



CHAPTER X 

THE CUISINE ON THE E . — THE ROMAN CATHOLIC 

BISHOP OF DOMINICA . 87 



CHAPTER XI 

DR GRAY ON YELLOW FEVER — MONT PEL^E — THE RED 

CARIBS OF DOMINICA 95 



CHAPTER XII 

DRIVES AND COUNTRY LIFE AT MANDEVILLE — NEGROES 

AND FUNERAL CUSTOMS 107 



CONTENTS xiii 



CHAPTER XIII 



PAGE 



MY VISIT TO A PEN— ARAWAK REMAINS— LEGEND OF 

THE COTTON-TREE . . . . . . 123 



CHAPTER XIV 

OBEAHISM AND COFFEE-PLANTING 133 

CHAPTER XV 

COCKPIT COUNTRY— THE MAROONS 146 



CHAPTER XVI 

INDIAN CATTLE AT MONTPELIER — PALMER MONUMENT 

IN MONTEGO BAY PARISH CHURCH — AMERICANS . 167 



CHAPTER XVII 

DESCRIPTION OF ROSE HALL — SUGAR — THE EXPENSE 
OF WORKING AN ESTATE A CENTURY AGO — BANANA 
CULTIVATION 179 



CHAPTER XVIII 

MONEAGUE HOTEL — THE TROUBLES OF CHRISTOPHER 

COLUMBUS 190 



CHAPTER XIX 

WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN JAMAICA — A BREAKDOWN ON THE 

RAILWAY— PORT ANTONIO— CHESTER VALE , , 201 



\ 



xiv CONTENTS 



CHAPTER XX 

PAGE 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN JAMAICA — ITS DIS- 
ESTABLISHMENT, ITS INCREASED ACTIVITY AND 
DEVELOPMENT 212 

CHAPTER XXI 

SIR HENRY MORGAN — LORD RODNEY — EDUCATION IN 
JAMAICA — CAPTAIN BAKER ON THE BRIGHT PROS- 
PECTS OF JAMAICA 230 



1 

/ I 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



ISLAND PRODUCTS. SUGAR, BANANAS, COCOA-NUTS Frontispiece 

GROUP OF NATIVES To face page 26 

FRUIT STEAMER ON ITS WEEKLY ROUND . ,, ,, 50 

GARDEN AT MYRTLE BANK HOTEL . . . ,, ,, 69 

ROAD NEAR KINGSTON ,, ,, 109 

FACSIMILE OF RECEIPT FOR SLAVE GIRL . „ ,, 152 

OLD-FASHIONED SUGAR MILL . . . . ,, ,, 184 

COCOA-NUT GROVE ,, ,, 199 

PORT ANTONIO ,, 206 



JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 



CHAPTER I 

MANDEVILLE — JAMAICA NOT NEAR THE VOLCANOES- 
BOOKS ON THE WEST INDIES 

Mandeville, 1st January 1903. — "Our horizon is not 
limited by the things of time. The expectation we 
entertain of a future life tends to make us view things 
in their true proportion." 

These sentences were uttered last Sunday morning 
by the Assistant-Bishop of Jamaica at the Parish 
Church of the little inland town of Mandeville, of 
which he is also Rector. 

The occasion which called forth his eloquent sermon 
upon the future life was the death of Dr Temple, the 
late Archbishop of Canterbury. 

The choice and scholarly English spoken by the 
Bishop, together with the breadth of thought which 
characterised his views, riveted my attention. Look- 
ing round at the mixed congregation of whites and 
blacks, I noted that the preacher had equally gained 
the attention of the dusky worshippers. 

A 



2 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

I wondered how much they understood of what he 
said, and what they really looked for in the life to 
come, for the creed must be simple if these grown-up 
children are to learn and digest it. I am told that 
a place where golden crowns will be placed upon their 
heads, harps in their hands, if they behave properly, 
appeals to their imagination, as do white robes to 
their sense of what constitutes decorous clothing for 
so great an occasion. One can also imagine that the 
old-fashioned doctrine of hell-fire would not be with- 
out efficacy as a check upon the habits of the black 
when he inclines to revert to his former type. 

Although the negro is naturally argumentative and 
litigious, it will be many years before his brain adapts 
itself to the study of the deep things of theological 
casuistry. 

One could scarcely expect him to grapple with the 
subtleties of the thirty-nine Articles, or, as I have 
irreverently heard them called, " the forty stripes save 
one," in his present evolutionary state of development. 

My lot having fallen to me in a house overrun with 
Americans, the dignified language of that morning's 
sermon, and the sonorous tones of the preacher, had 
come as balm to my afflicted ears. 

If the virility, energy, and business capacities of our 
friends across the Atlantic are of world-wide fame, so, 
honesty compels me to say, are their bragging and 
their boasting. When one is the only Briton amongst 
a crowd of Yankees, the discordant nasal voices in 
which they discuss food and dollars from morning 
till night is apt to get on one's nerves. 

However, I did not come to Jamaica to write about 



AN ENEKVATING CLIMATE 3 

Americans. I am glad they visit this island in search 
of health, and bring their much-prized dollars with 
them for the good of the Commonwealth. 

Two months have scarcely passed since I left my 
native shores. Hosts of new experiences, fresh sensa- 
tions and interests have filled up the intervening 
weeks. 

I had intended to write a diary ; instead, I have 
made some progress down that path which is said to 
be paved with good intentions. They say of the 
natives of these latitudes that " they were born tired, 
grew up tired, and have been tired ever since." I 
cannot truthfully say that of myself, although the 
enervating climate tries the strongest when they feel 
tropical heat for the first time. Energies which were 
rampant in the temperate zone find the end of their 
tether very soon under Jamaican skies. Perhaps this 
is why the island is said to be beneficial to persons 
suffering from overdone nerves. They must rest in 
the middle of the day ; the heat is too great for any 
real exertion. I have not had much time to take 
notes, but as I propose staying four weeks in this 
quiet spot, I intend to gather together the mental 
fragments at present lying scattered about in that 
organ, which, for want of better knowledge, I designate 
my brain-pan, and piece them together into something 
which may be of use to people contemplating a visit to 
Jamaica. And I cannot help thinking if it were more 
generally known in England how easy it is to take such 
a trip, and how much there is to reward one for the 
trouble, many persons would be only too desirous of 
becoming acquainted with this lovely island. 



4 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

When I told friends that I intended to visit Jamaica 
this winter I was amused at the hazy notion prevailing, 
even amongst the well-educated, not only as to its 
geographical position, but regarding life in general as it 
is lived out here. 

One lady said to me, "I call it flying in the face 
of Providence to go so near those horrid volcanoes." 
I meekly explained that Jamaica lay several hundred 
miles away, but she went on to say, "Well! I read 
in the papers the other day that an American geologist 
says that the Pelee catastrophe is only the beginning 
of the end. Sooner or later all the West Indies 
will go." 

There is no doubt that this feeling exists in some 
circles in England, and I think the sooner accurate 
knowledge replaces panic-stricken ignorance the better 
will it be for the colonists here, and for English people 
obliged to escape from the rigours of a northern 
winter. 

It is well to know what to see in this part of the 
world. Several persons have said to me, both in 
England and in Jamaica, that they could find no guide- 
book to tell them how to set about taking the trip 
to the West Indies. I felt this want myself, and 
enquired at Cook's office if Herr Baedecker had found 
his way out here yet. He has not. Nor do I mean 
to forestall that conscientious and most useful Teuton. 
Still less do I intend to write a guide-book to Jamaica. 
All I propose doing is to enlighten intending visitors 
to these parts as to the best things to see. Very 
probably the greater part of them will belong to my 
sex. If they can have patience as I chat about persons, 



TEOPICAL FLOEA 5 

and tell my own experiences in my own way, they 
may learn things which may prove useful. 

So far, I am charmed with the glorious vegetation 
of the tropics. There are places in this island more 
enchanting than any descriptions of fairyland ever 
penned. 

Professor Haddon of Cambridge had told me before 
leaving England that the three most beautiful islands 
in the world were Java, Ceylon, and Jamaica. Having 
never been to the east, or nearer the tropics on land 
than Assouan in Egypt in the northern hemisphere, 
and Auckland in New Zealand in the southern, my 
first sight of the exuberance and prolific growth of 
tropical flora was like the opening of a new and 
attractive three-volume novel. 

I am still at the first volume, and I shall only get 
to the end of the third when I have explored some 
of the Blue Mountain scenery, which, being admittedly 
the best thing in Jamaica, I am, in the spirit of the 
schoolboy who is promised cake after bread and butter, 
leaving to the last. 

There is one small guide-book to the island which 
I have found out here, written by an American. It 
is entitled " Side Trips in Jamaica," by Mary F. 
Bradford, Boston and ISTew York, Sherwood Publishing 
Company, and is already in its third edition. The 
booklet certainly carries out the object for which it 
was compiled, namely, to supply the need of a practical 
guide for tourists. There are a series of trips given for 
those making only a short tour, and a brief account 
of the historical and physical features of the island, 
its agriculture and government. But what is even 



6 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

more useful, it contains reliable information regarding 
trains, hotels, boarding-houses, distances, and expenses 
in general. 

The books most generally read by visitors to these 
islands are Kingsley's " At Last," and Froude's " West 
Indies," but people find them disappointing, and say 
the former greatly overrated the islands. Of course, 
unless one is a naturalist, or, as the Americans designate 
that calling, a "bug-hunter," one can scarcely share 
the ecstasies of an expert in that branch of science. 
Again in these clays of universal travel we cannot 
all visit at Government Houses, and have horses and 
carriages placed at our disposal. Here, one is more 
or less dependent upon one's own efforts, for there have 
not been sufficient tourists to these islands to establish 
any system of coaches, and one must hire one's own 
buggy and horse. Moreover, since the West Indies 
have fallen upon evil times, one hesitates before accept- 
ing proffered hospitality. Years ago things were not 
so ; travellers were few and far between, the prosperity 
of the sugar-planter was proverbial, but the old order 
has changed owing to the decline of the sugar trade. 
The spirit may be, and is indeed willing, but the 
purse-strings are limited. 



CHAPTEE II 

THE DIRECT LINE — THE LAZINESS OF THE NEGRO — 
FELLOW-PASSENGERS ON THE TORT ANTONIO 

I have found during my short stay in Jamaica that it 
is not wise to pin too much faith to the gospel of the 
West Indies, according to J. A. Froucle, nor is it 
discreet to quote it to the inhabitants thereof. His 
book was published in 1888, and the conclusions he 
arrived at upon colonial problems are called Frouclisms. 
The moral is that there is another side to West Indian 
questions than that of government officialism, and that 
these two do not hunt in couples is apparent to the 
most casual observer. 

I must, however, refrain from discussing the subject 
since I intend to devote this chapter to other topics. 
Having yielded to the conviction that it was my 
bounden duty to enlighten people at home as to the 
easy accessibility of Jamaica, as well as to inform them 
what they lose by not putting in six weeks at least of 
one winter in this charming island, for nowhere can 
one see tropical scenery better than in Jamaica, I pass 
on to tell them the best way to get here. This they 
can do most directly by the Elder, Dempster steamers, 
which run fortnightly between Avonmouth Dock, near 



8 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

Bristol, and Kingston, the chief town in Jamaica. 
Formerly the Eoyal Mail Service had the monopoly of 
the West Indian trade, but within the last two years 
Mr Chamberlain has arranged with the firm of Elder, 
Dempster to carry the mails directly to Jamaica, which 
is the largest of our island possessions in these waters. 
These ships are called the Fruit Boats, for they return 
with cargoes of bananas. I believe by contract they 
have to bring from Jamaica 25,000 bunches every 
fortnight. This is the reason of the recent cheapness 
of this particular fruit; one may often see them on 
costermongers' barrows in London and elsewhere sold 
for a halfpenny each. 

I left Avonmouth Dock 8th November 1902, in the 
Port Antonio, and a very comfortable ship I found her. 
Having paid a little extra, I was fortunate enough to 
secure a deck cabin to myself ; this is quite worth the 
money, especially when one is approaching Jamaica. 
My first-class return ticket available for nine months 
cost £40, but there were good first-class cabins at 
£32. Very good stewardesses are carried on all 
these ships. Now the Eoyal Mail steamers go first 
to Barbadoes ; at present, on account of an outbreak 
of small-pox last autumn, they go to Trinidad. Here 
they trans-ship passengers, cargo, and mails for the Lee- 
ward and Windward Islands into small inter-colonial 
steamers which ply between the islands, after which 
they proceed to Jamaica. 

One avoids all this by taking the direct steamers, and, 
as I have said before, this island is more accessible 
than any I have so far visited. There are capital 
roads, good conveyances, and good saddle-horses, a 



STORMY WEATHER 9 

central railway connecting the most important towns. 
In winter the climate is perfection, whereas nobody 
mentions Trinidad but to groan over their experience 
of the moist heat and the incessant tropical rain which 
makes travelling about that island too fatiguing for words, 
to say nothing of the risk of getting fever by not being 
able alw r ays to change your drenched clothing. Nor 
do any of the islands between Trinidad and the Danish 
island of St Thomas, which I have visited, possess 
facilities for tourist accommodation. In some of them 
roads practically do not exist beyond the outskirts of 
the little town where the mail steamers land passengers. 
If horses are wanted they have to be hired from the 
inhabitants. The hotels, such as they are, and still 
more, the food, one would hardly care to take the 
responsibility of recommending. 

It was raining as I said good-bye to my friends on 
the Port Antonio, a steamer of about four thousand 
tons. In fact, for some three days previously a depres- 
sion had been announced, and everybody prophesied 
we should come in for stormy weather. We could not 
have had worse. It was under lowering skies and 
heavy rain we steamed down the Bristol Channel. 
The next day, Sunday, scarcely a lady moved from 
her berth, and most of the men appeared only to show 
themselves, returning again to seek the privacy of their 
cabins. We rolled and pitched for seven consecutive 
days ; it was not until we had been more than a week 
at sea that everybody sat down to meals. Fortunately 
I am a good sailor, but I never boast of my prowess 
in that respect, knowing, to my cost, that pride goes 
before a fall ! Some years ago I went to New Zealand 



10 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

by the Cape of Good Hope, and returned by the Horn, 
thus circumnavigating the globe. I learnt to drink 
cocktails off Tierra del Fuego, came in for fever and 
fighting at Kio, and enlarged my stock of unparlia- 
mentary language at the Canaries, where we were not 
allowed to land, and, instead, had to endure the slow 
tortures of coaling. During the whole of that voyage 
I suffered the discomforts of sea-sickness exactly 
twenty minutes, the scene of my unhappy, though 
transitory illness being off Plymouth, as we steamed 
down channel. In a moment of unguarded weakness, 
some months after, I boasted of this to a desponding 
group of fellow-passengers. We were leaving Algiers, 
and the sea was as smooth as it could be, but it was 
in the days of my innocence. I know noio what is to 
be expected of the Mediterranean, and by a cruel 
experience I also know what a gale m the Gulf of Lions 
means. On my arrival at Marseilles, I had broken all 
previous records, and for hours had endured the pains 
of the condemnable. My appearance was such that 
my fellow-passengers forbore to taunt me with my 
vain boasting of the day previous. How were the 
mighty fallen ! " All the world wondered/' though they 
preserved a discreet and kindly silence. 

Notwithstanding the rough weather we experienced 
in the "roaring forties," I managed to obtain a good 
deal of amusement and some useful information during 
those days of discomfort. No less famous a writer 
than Plato says that to travel profitably one should 
be between fifty and sixty. I can scarcely lay claim 
to as many years, still, if the chief object in going 
abroad be, as Plato thinks, to converse with inspired 



FEUIT CULTUBE 11 

men whom Providence scatters about the globe, and 
from whom alone wisdom can be learnt, I hope I have 
succeeded in gleaning some of that golden harvest 
which falls before the sickle of curious enquiry. We 
had several interesting people on board, and whiled 
away otherwise tedious hours by exchanging and 
comparing notes of lands we had or had not travelled 
in. 

A retired colonel, whose chief aim in life was to return 
to Jamaica where he had seen twenty years of service, 
and grow pines for the English market, assured me 
quite gravely he had taken up the calling of a green- 
grocer. On further enquiry I learnt that he was en- 
thusiastic about the future possibilities of fruit culture, 
and, said he, " when we get the steamers promised us 
by Elder, Dempster, which are to take only ten days 
between Kingston and Bristol, what a chance it will 
be for us pine-growers ! 9S I met this gentleman five 
days after landing at Kingston, at a garden-party at 
King's House. I thought he looked tired, and he 
explained that he had been working hard himself ever 
since he landed, planting his precious pines. I asked 
if he could not trust them to his gardener. "No," 
said he ; " the blacks are very good fellows, but if you 
tell them to put first a layer of sand and then manure, 
they are bound to do the opposite. It is easier to plant 
them yourself." In saying this he just touched upon 
the sore spot in Jamaica, as I afterwards learnt. The 
labour question may be bad in England, but it is a 

very different thing in this island. Captain C , of 

the Eoyal Mail Service, said to me one day, "We 
never overlook a fault amongst our black firemen : with 



12 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

a white man we can do so, for he will thank his stars 
the omission was not noticed, and will be careful not 
to repeat his fault, but the blacks have not sense 
enough for that, and we fine them one or two days' 
pay, as the case may be/ 5 An English lady, who had 
seen better days at home and has opened a boarding- 
house at Mandeville, said to me : " In England I used 
to say that I worked like a nigger. Now I say I work 
like an Englishwoman." The laziness of the negro 
is proverbial in the West Indies, yet occasionally he 
makes a good servant. On another occasion I was 
told by an old gentleman that he had often watched 
hard-working coolies cultivating their little patch of 
garden. From a window looking out in an opposite 
direction he had seen lazy niggers asleep all day under 
trees. At night, when the coolies had departed, he 
had watched woolly heads creep along the low fence, 
and steal yams and anything they could lay their 
hands upon, which the industrious Hindoo had planted. 
At the same time, I am, told on unquestionable auth- 
ority that when sure of good treatment, the negroes on 
some estates are hard-working and reliable. 

In most cases the West Indian black finds the labour 
of three days sufficient to keep him for a week, thus 
the property owners soon after the days of emancipation 
suffered greatly from the lack of labour. To supply 
this want the Government imported coolies from India, 
and it is interesting to compare the lithe, sinewy 
Hindoos with their intelligent dark eyes and black 
straight hair with the ofttimes lumbering gait of the 
woolly-haired, thick-lipped sons of Ham. 

One of our most popular passengers was an American 



FELLOW-PASSENGERS 13 

lady who had seen many lands, and last, but not least, 
had travelled from Japan via Vladivostock and the 
Eussian Railway down to Pekin. She had been a 
guest at the headquarters of each of the allied forces, 
and it was interesting to hear her recount her adventures. 
She had, she said, met with unfailing courtesy from 
the Russian officials, and was loud in her praises of that 
nation. She declared that our Indian troops had been 
generally admitted to be the finest body of men in 
Pekin. " You English," she said, " think a deal of your 
alliance with the Japs, but I guess that if it was to 
their advantage they would leave you in the lurch any 
day." This enterprising lady had visited the royal 
palace, and had photographed her Imperial Majesty of 
China's bed, together with other celestial furniture 
never before exposed to the impious gaze of foreign 
devils ! Indeed she was a most entertaining person, 
and apparently had done everything there was to be 
done, as known to this generation. 

One of our officers had been in Constantinople at the 
time of the Armenian atrocities. He had his tale to 
tell, and after one had heard from an eye-witness of 
the unspeakable cruelty of the Turk, but also of the 
utter unworthiness of the Armenian — who seems to have 
been as much of a mauvais sujet of the Porte as the 
Eenian was to us in years gone past — one felt glad that 
British blood had not been spilt in defence of so 
miserable a people as the Armenians. There were 
several persons who came out to Jamaica returning by 
the same steamer, and spending the four or five days 
in a hasty survey of the island. One couple were 
going on to Mexico and California. A Russian journalist, 



14 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

commissioned to send home articles upon Jamaica, and 
a majestic and venerable dame, known as the fair 
Delicia, were also fellow-passengers. The last-named 
lady is well known in fashionable circles of Kingston 
society. She is not far removed from that limit which 
is supposed to represent the average lease of life. Her 
amiability is not excessive, but her skittishness is 
phenomenal. She dances on all possible occasions, and 
waltzes generally with the youngest men present. She 
has a playful way of boasting that she cannot remember 
the persons with whom she has quarrelled, and reputa- 
tions are at a discount when the fair Delicia engages 
in conversation. 



CHAPTEK III 

THE KESWICK DELEGATES — MISS SARAH WALKER — 
HAYTIAN CANNIBALISM 

There were two persons, however, whose arrival by 
the Port Antonio was looked for with feelings of great 
expectation by a certain class of people living in this 
island, and whose ministrations, I fancy, have since 
resulted in airing certain questions which perhaps 
required to see daylight. These were two delegates 
from the Keswick Conference. The latter, I believe, is 
a yearly gathering of Evangelicals at home, and is 
attended by nonconformists and a certain section of 
Low Churchmen. Possibly the preaching which one 
identifies with this particular school of thought, though 
it is not one which appeals to me, may be adapted to 
the black and coloured people who attend the numerous 
dissenting chapels which are to be found all over the 
West Indies. Indeed the negro is naturally pious, or, 
to put it in plain English, superstitious. I believe 
Professor Huxley has shown that this is invariably the 
case with savage or undeveloped races. Be it as it 
may, I am quite willing to concede that whatever 
agency has been at work to influence these people, who 
two or three centuries ago were offering up human 

15 



16 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

sacrifices and practising the most hideous and revolting 
rites in the backwoods of West Africa, to say nothing 
of their semi-savagery when emancipated in 1834, has 
been a powerful influence for good. The negro is 
stupid, but his evolution is going on apace compared 
with the slow development of many races. 

The court-house of Mandeville is visible from my 
window, and to-day the petty cases of a large sur- 
rounding district are being tried. I have enquired 
what are the offences which generally come before 
the magistrates on these occasions. I was told from 
trustworthy sources that murder is most rare amongst 
the blacks, the cases tried being mostly petty larceny, 
property, or commercial disputes. Local squabbles 
are often settled by a clergyman, or dissenting minister, 
before being brought into court. 

I asked if there were many cases of matrimonial ill- 
treatment or quarrelling, and was met by the reply, 
" They don't marry here." Unfortunately this is largely 
a fact, and constitutes a great blemish on the character 
of the Jamaican black. When one hears, however, the 
question discussed, one can hardly blame a hard-work- 
ing negro woman (and most of them are that) for 
refusing to marry if the practical result of marriage, 
as it affects her, is that sooner or later she will have 
to keep her husband as well as her children. 

Persons who have had experience with these women 
tell me that the instinct of maternity is the strongest 
they have — to them childlessness is a reproach. When 
they do marry they are generally faithful, but the lot 
which a black woman dreads more than any other is 
that of being a deserted wife. " Me get tired of him, 






UKFAIK DIVISION OF LABOUE 17 

sah, and he get tired of me," is a very natural excuse 
when the parson endeavours to legalise the bond. We 
know such things as husbands and wives getting tired 
of each other occur in our own land ; the negress voices 
what many a white woman feels. In considering this 
subject — for, like the poor, it is ever with you in 
these parts — one must bear in mind that in slavery 
times the blacks were herded together like cattle on the 
estates. Enthusiastic reformers forget that it may take 
generations to eradicate their hereditary promiscuity of 
life. 

Nobody who sees these women stride along, often 
walking twenty miles to the nearest market town, with 
baskets on their heads weighing occasionally upwards 
of a hundred pounds, could think them lazy, especially 
when one knows how poor are the weekly returns for 
their merchandise, which consists chiefly of home-grown 
yams, sweet potatoes, oranges and bananas. 

An American told me he was going to Kingston by 
the electric tram. Beside him sat a well-dressed negro, 
wearing a silver watch and chain. A black woman, 
carrying an enormous basket heavily filled on her head, 
ran alongside the tram, which had slowed down. The 
two were talking, the man from the tram, she from the 
road. 

" Is that your wife ? " he asked the man in surprise. 

" Yes, sah ! dat my wife, sah," replied he. 

" You lazy fellow, you ought to be ashamed of your- 
self ! " exclaimed the American indignantly. " Why 
don't you let your wife ride and you walk ? " he further 
blurted out. 

" Please, sah, the women, sah, ; bout here be so kind, 

B 



18 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

sah ! " apologetically explained the negro in an injured 
voice. 

This episode sufficiently illustrates the conditions of 
the division of labour amongst a large proportion of 
the emancipated Jamaican population. The Moravians 
have large settlements in the island as well as other 
dissenting bodies ; but where all work together for the 
spiritual good of the race whom Providence has 
permitted to flourish and multiply in these islands it 
would be a work of supererogation for me to criticise 
their methods. 

Speaking from the point of view of a fellow-passenger, 
one of the delegates sent out by the Keswick Con- 
vention was an interesting personality. His writings 
and undenominational services in South London are, I 
am told, well-known in nonconformist circles. 

He is a tall, white-haired, venerable-looking man, and 
when I first caught sight of his face at Avonmouth 
Dock, I was forcibly reminded of a picture of the 
Pastor Oberlin who figured in one of my favourite 
story-books, when, as children, we had certain literature 
set apart for Sundays, other for week-days. I had 
several conversations with him, and I thought him to 
be both liberal-minded and sympathetic. He seemed 
to hold that the most important thing in life was not 
so much what one believed as what one did. 

It was interesting to hear this evangelistic missioner 
tell how he had been brought up in the straightest and 
strictest school of thought, and how he had himself 
preached and held the most rigid doctrines as to who 
were to be saved and who were to be eternally damned. 
But travel, he said, had opened his eyes, and he now 



NAEEOW VIEWS 19 

saw things from a far wider standpoint. It appears he 
had held many conversations with advanced and culti- 
vated Hindoos, and he could not bring himself to 
believe that such beautiful souls and such refined 
intelligences could be doomed for ever, because they 
could not accept gospel truths. Personally, I have 
never been troubled by the teachings of such a harsh 
creed, but I can imagine the trial it must have been to 
a man of firm convictions to sever himself for ever from 
life-long beliefs, which, no doubt, he had preached and 
expounded time after time. He told me that he was 
going to hold meetings in different parts of Jamaica for 
a month. I have since read in the island papers that 
his sermons have been of the revivalistic order, and that 
the meetings have been well attended. His colleague, 
a clergyman of the Church of England, was by no 
means a persona grata on board ship. His religious 
views belonged to that exclusive and narrow school of 
thought in the Church of England, which happily does 
not find many adherents nowadays. In an extract 
from a sermon which he preached at Kingston, some 
weeks after his arrival, I read that he lamented how 
few people there were who would be saved ! In these 
days of latitudinarianism and toleration there is no 
reason why peculiarly constituted temperaments should 
not cling to obsolete and effete doctrines if they like 
them, but it seems to me, whatever our creed may be, 
and however much we wish to benefit our fellows, with- 
out exercising tact, we shall do more harm than good. 
This delegate from Keswick evidently thought his 
fellow-passengers were in a bad way, for he offered un- 
inviting-looking religious literature to those who con- 



20 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

versed with him ; but an amusing incident in which he 
was chief actor quite enlivened the tediousness of the 
voyage. The charming American lady, of whom I 
have already spoken, was invited into the smoking- 
room one stormy afternoon by two gentlemen in order 
to tell their fortunes by means of palmistry. Probably 
this zealous clergyman had already mentally decided 
that she w T as a brand to be snatched from the burning. 
Although a non-smoker he confronted her, and with 
Hibernian eloquence harangued her as to the im- 
propriety of her conduct in entering those precincts 
sacred to the cult of tobacco. It would perhaps be 
wiser to draw a veil over the sequel to his somewhat 
precipitate and uncalled-for interference. Needless to 
say, his own sex resented it in words which I decline 
to insert in these pages. At the same time one feels 
that it would be beneficial and a distinct gain to society 
at large if some of the well-meaning but indiscreet 
upholders of exclusive cults would consider the feelings 
of others and behave to those whose path crosses their 
own with, at least, that generous toleration and 
spontaneous kind-heartedness which characterises well- 
bred men and women of the world. The influence of a 
high-minded, genial Englishman who is too proud to 
stoop to meanness of any description, but who does not 
shun his fellows because their moral status is not up 
to his own level, is far greater than that of the narrow- 
minded but " superior " religionist who looks down upon 
a sinful generation from the pedestal of an assured 
salvation. It may be that the latter stands ready to 
reach out a hand to help up his less favoured brethren, 
that is, from his own standpoint, but often the out- 



MISS SARAH WALKER 21 

stretched hand is a rough one, the face bending down 
towards the sinner is uninviting in its cold, harsh 
expression, and the soul that might have been helped 
plunges back into the strife of the waters of worldliness 
preferring them to a joyless, uncongenial sanctity. 

These gentlemen sent out by the Keswick Conven- 
tion have finished their mission, and, in justice to both, 
I have pleasure in saying that it is evident their meet- 
ings have been much appreciated. This very morning I 
held a long conversation with a lady of mahogany 
complexion, who spoke rapturously of their preaching 
in this place. She walked by my side quite half a 
mile during my matutinal walk before breakfast. Miss 
Sarah Walker — that was her name— informed me besides 
that she was unmarried, and lived with an aunt not 
very distant from Mandeville. I asked what her age 
might be. 

" Thirty-one, mem," she replied. 

" How do you get your living ? " I asked, smiling at 
the pride she evidently felt at being engaged in con- 
versation with a white lady, evidenced by the conscious- 
ness of superiority she assumed over her black sisters, 
who were not so honoured, and who passed on either 
side of us, listening politely to our conversation. 

" I sit in de market, mem, and sell cakes." 

" I think you all seem very well off round here," I 
ventured. 

" Oh no, mem ; there are some very poor people round 
'bout," she assured me. 

11 But they all have coffee or oranges to sell ? " I 
queried. 

"Yes, mem; but all de summer dey get so little 



22 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

for der coffee, only trepence or twopence a pound, and 
only one and trepence for a large barrel of oranges, bery 
little indeed." I had already learnt that agents from 
the United Fruit Company buy up all the produce of 
the smaller cultivators in this district. 

" They are so poor, mem, dey can't pay de taxes," she 
proceeded to inform me. 

" What happens then ? " I enquired. 

" Den dey goes to prison, mem, or sometimes get time 
given dem to make up what dey can't pay." 

" I suppose you have to pay rent too," I suggested. 

" No, mem ; we live in our own house and only pay 
taxes, twelve shillings and twopence ebbery year, six 
and a penny ebbery six munts ; we go up and pay it at 
de Court House." 

I elicited from her that she and her family had always 
lived in Jamaica, that once or twice she had been to 
Kingston, but what amused me most was her conversa- 
tion upon dress. 

"Bery good stuff, mem," said she, pointing to the 
gown which scarcely covered her knees. " I gave one 
and trepence a yard, and it cost four shillins for 
making. Last year it was Sunday frock, but when it 
wast it swinked up." 

" I see ! You like a smart frock for Sundays ? " I 
volunteered, having learnt that the first day of the 
week is special frock competition day amongst the 
negresses. This woman was very superior to some I 
met in my morning walks, who generally said, u Good 
morning, missus." Probably she had at one time been 
a domestic servant and had learnt to say " mem " for 
" ma'am." 



SUNDAY SMAKTXESS 23 

" Oh yes, mem, dat's our pride ; we all dress 'spectable 
on Sunday to go to church. Work ebbery day, but 
live for Sunday." She looked radiant at the mere 
thought of it. 

On my return I was told that the desire to cut a fine 
figure every Sabbath day is the key to the labour 
question in Jamaica. 

The negroes can live on yams, which grow in their 
gardens and require no trouble to cultivate, but they 
must work to buy the dresses good enough to wear on 
Sunday. On week-days they go barefoot. On Sunday 
they screw themselves into tight-fitting garments and 
into new, squeaking boots, which, if the w T ay be long, 
they take off, and put on just before going into church 
or chapel. To be dressed smartly and go to church 
once a week is the highest aim of the black's life. 

The fact that any white woman can ride or walk in 
any part of the island, either by day or by night, in 
perfect safety, is in itself testimony of the highest 
worth to the civilising agencies at work, let them be 
Moravian, Wesleyan, Eoman or Anglican. The black 
under British rule is not an unworthy subject of the 
Empire; but left to himself, and to the workings of 
his own sweet will, he might perhaps revert to a 
state of savagery. One has only to consider the 
condition of the island of Hayti to see the probability 
of such a contingency. 

I had read Chevalier St John's book on " The Black 
Kepublic," in which he mentions the cannibalistic habits 
of these islanders, before I left home. On two separate 
occasions I have since been told that the killing and 
eating of small children is quite a common thing, 



24 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

although still denied by better-class Haytians. Each 
of my informers were officers of ships bound for 
Haytian ports. There they had seen human flesh ex- 
posed for sale in the public markets. The buyers of this 
horrible commodity significantly ask for a salt pork." 
One man told me he had been taken by a Haytian of 
the better class to a spot at night, within forty yards 
of a grove, where children were being sacrificed accord- 
ing to the Voodhoo rites, which their ancestors practised 
centuries ago in the forest fastnesses of Western Africa. 
It was at the risk of his life. He had been unable 
to see the horrid rites which take place before the 
child was actually tomahawked, but he heard its 
shrieks when tortured. Great mystery surrounds the 
Voodhoo worship, and never, so far, has an European 
been known to be present at the ceremonies which take 
place before a human sacrifice. My informer told me 
that instead of dreading this fate for their children, the 
mothers were proud that their particular offspring 
should be chosen for the sacrifice. 

In connection w r ith the Haytian Voodhoo worship, 
I was lent an old French manuscript by an American. 
It had been written about one hundred and fifty years 
ago, and professed to be the confessions under compul- 
sion of a Haytian negress as to the practice of the 
most degrading and loathsome black magic which then 
prevailed in the island. Whether this continues at 
present I am unable to say, but they still have the 
custom of smearing the blood of freshly-killed infants 
over the bodies of childless women to make them bear 
children. Every savage race, doubtless, at one particular 
stage of its development dabbled in mystic and bloody 



EAELY RACIAL SIMILARITIES 25 

rites, just as every land, where prehistoric traces of 
man's existence have been found, has had its Stone Age, 
its kitchen-middens, etc. There is a wonderful simi- 
larity in the doings in their infancy of the world's 
different races, just in the same way as all children, 
black, brown, and white, learn to walk before they run ; 
but to my mind it is an interesting study to see what 
two hundred years more or less of that which we call 
civilisation has produced upon a race very low down 
upon the evolutionary ladder. Possibly the Tierra del 
Fuegans and the Mincopies of the Andamans are upon 
the lowest rung, but I do not think an anthropologist 
would put the negroid races much higher up. 



CHAPTEE IV 

THE BLACK UNDER BRITISH RULE — THE GOVERNOR OF 
JAMAICA AND SUITE 

Without unduly congratulating ourselves as first-class 
colonists, I think we can fairly say that the black is at 
his best under British rule. He has learnt industrial 
arts. The best of his race are mechanics, policemen, 
soldiers, sailors, shopkeepers, and domestic servants. 
They may not be brilliant, but in this hot climate, 
where it is an impossibility for the European to do field 
labour, they serve their purpose. In Jamaica the 
trains and the electric trams in and round Kingston 
are driven by natives, your clothes are washed by 
negresses, and very well done too; occasionally you 
suffer from their excessive professional zeal, when 
they send home your stockings stiff with starch. 
The waiters, chambermaids, domestic servants, farm 
labourers, are all black. In the hotels it is notice- 
able how well they speak English. 

The harmless, courteous country folk one meets in 
one's drives over the island are, from all accounts, 
very different to their dusky brethren in the United 
States of America, where life is none too safe, and 
lynch law apparently a necessary evil. 




< 
o 



«» 

£ 



A POSSIBLE PROBLEM 2? 

So far as I can see, their worst fault is laziness. 
It is a most irritating fault to the man who wants 
labour ; but if the pay of three days' work suffices to 
keep a negro in what he considers comfort, it is hard 
to see that he should be compelled to work six days 
out of seven to suit his employer's crops. And if 
his or her highest ambition is to cut a fine figure on 
Sunday, I should be inclined, whilst inculcating thrift, 
to encourage that amiable weakness to the uttermost. 
One reads sometimes of the poor negro, but in a 
country like Jamaica, where anything once planted 
in the soil grows in the most prolific manner, and 
where such nourishing food as yams and sweet 
potatoes form the chief nutriment of the black, to say 
nothing of the beautiful climate necessitating only the 
very lightest of clothing, real poverty, such as we are 
unfortunately acquainted with in England, does not 
exist. 

Probably in a few years' time, the problem of an 
enormous black population will confront the govern- 
ment of these islands. We know that in the United 
States such is the case. Barbadoes, too, has an immense 
population. If one thinks seriously of it, what else 
can be expected of a people severed from their natural 
state, and placed in the happiest of circumstances, 
where the increase of population has no such checks 
operating upon it, as it must have had in the wild and 
pristine condition of savage life amongst African forests, 
where a thousand petty warfares thinned the ranks of 
the warriors, and where cannibalism and disease would 
probably account for quite half the yearly tribal babies. 
Now, Jamaica's best crop is picaninnies. Nor are there 



28 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

epidemics severe enough, or earthquakes bad enough, 
to carry off the superfluous nigger babies. 

A story which had its comical side was told me by 
a captain of the E.M.S. He knew a negro in Kingston 
who had long courted the lady of his affections. She 
had responded, but not to the degree demanded of her 
by her impassioned lover. In the captain's presence 
he begged her on his knees to marry him, and " make 
an honest man " of him. 

Strangers to the West Indies are often surprised at 
the use of slang and funny expressions by the natives. 
On landing at Trinidad, we wished to be driven up to 
the Queen's Park Hotel for lunch. There were three 
of us, a lady and gentleman and myself. To our 
enquiry as to how much our driver would charge for 
taking us there, the ready answer came, " a bob each." 
We preserved serious faces, the driver evidently being 
unconscious of having said anything out of the ordinary, 
and paid our shillings. 

I was driving one day in Kingston, when my 
coachman turned a sharp corner at a furious rate. 
In so doing, a woman was nearly run over. " Out 
of de way, my lub, for God's sake ! " exclaimed he, 
not attempting to slacken his horse's pace. 

There were other passengers whose eccentricities 
afforded the passengers of the Port Antonio some 
amusement and much subject-matter for conversa- 
tion. We had the Governor of Jamaica and, accord- 
ing to the London newspapers, "suite" on board. 
In what the "suite" consisted, I am still at a loss 
to divine. They were the last to come on board 
at Avonmouth Dock, and as the rest of us who 



THE GOVEENOE OF JAMAICA 29 

had come by an earlier train watched the small 
steamer, which brought them alongside the Port 
Antonio, plunging and rolling in the heavy seas which 
even then were racing up the Bristol Channel, we 
congratulated ourselves that we had walked straight 
on to the vessel from the quay an hour before. When 
their Excellencies "and suite" came on board, the 
ship was standing out some distance from the shore. 
I counted five adults, three babies, and three women- 
servants. The party consisted of Sir Augustus and 
Lady Hemming, their secretary, a married daughter 
with her husband, a coffee planter in Jamaica, three 
small children belonging to the latter, two nurses 
and a maid. 

The present Governor of Jamaica was formerly a 
clerk in the office of the Secretary of State for the 
Colonies. In 1884 he was sent as a delegate to the 
West African Conference at Berlin, and later, on 
special service to Paris in 1890, in connection w T ith 
the delimitation of French and English possessions 
on the west coast of Africa. He became the Governor 
of British Guiana, 1896, and succeeded Sir Henry 
Norman as Governor of Jamaica in 1898. The term 
of office is for five years, and this is consequently his 

h last year in Jamaica, unless a special application is 
made for an extension ; but one can scarcely imagine 

! that that will be the case with Sir Augustus and Lady 

r Hemming. Not but what it is conceded on all hands 
that His Excellency is a most amiable man ; if not 
brilliant, at least he has shown conspicuous talent in 

1; the fiscal department. Owing to his clever financial 
administration, the island budget for the first time 



30 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

this year shows a surplus, although the best that can 
be said of the condition of Jamaica is that which 
Mr Chamberlain declared in the House of Commons, 
to the effect that up to the present the local govern- 
ment had been able to do little more than bring about 
an equipoise between revenue and expenditure. 

The social relations between the chief people in the 
island and the reigning lady at the gubernatorial 
residence did not strike me as being particularly happy 
or satisfactory. One felt sorry that striving colonists 
such as the Jamaicans should lack that sympathy and 
consideration which, whether they be white or coloured, 
they certainly have a right to expect from the wives 
of those officials who govern them in the King's name, 
and who are paid very handsomely out of the island 
revenues for doing so. 

An elderly lady who was present at a ball given 
last month at King's House, which is situated in 
lovely grounds about three miles out of Kingston, 
remarked to me that it was unlike entertainments 
of the kind given in times past, in that it lacked 
"grace, dignity, and refinement/' I was sorry to 
miss this ball, but, being absent amongst the Wind- 
ward Islands at the time it took place, I returned 
to find my invitation awaiting me at my hotel. 



CHAPTEE V 

LAND SWALLOWS — TUEKS ISLANDS — AN EARTHQUAKE 
SHOCK — CONSTANT SPEING HOTEL 

We had delightful weather some days before our 
arrival at Kingston; the sunsets were magnificent, 
the beautiful colouring of the after-glow I shall never 
forget. I remember two nights before the end of our 
journey going to the forecastle of the ship to watch 
the fantastic shapes of the clouds on the southern 
horizon, intersected as the dark masses were with 
the most wonderful opalesque lines of pale green, 
blue, and yellow, the latter shading into deepest orange. 
In front of us was flying a little land swallow, heralding 
the approach of land. As Christopher Columbus 
neared the scene of his wonderful discoveries, he 
speaks of the little winged messenger of hope which, 
flying on ahead of his ship, warned his brave sailors 
of the approach of terra firma. 

It was no less a world-explorer than the above 
who discovered Jamaica the 3rd of May, 1494. It 
was during his second voyage to the New World, 
and the Spaniards kept it till 1655, when it was 
surrendered to an English force. Oliver Cromwell, 
rtiose policy was that of to have and to hold, sent 

31 



32 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

out a Conmiissioner to conduct the Civil Government, 
also 1000 troops. These were followed shortly after 
by 1500 settlers from Nevis, Bermuda, New England, 
and Barbadoes, and 1000 Irishmen, with as many young 
women. Ten years later the foundation of Jamaica's 
wealth as a sugar-growing country was laid by the 
immigration into it of over 1000 inhabitants of Surinam, 
which had been given to the Dutch in exchange for 
New York, then known as New Amsterdam; these 
people industriously engaged in planting sugar in 
the western parts of the island where the country 
is flat. For many years nothing more momentous 
than occasional depredations of a piratical nature, or 
attacks from French cruisers, occurred to disturb the 
progress of this industry. 

Later the history of the island consists of constant 
quarrelling, the Civil Government being repeatedly 
repealed, then restored. Finally, in 1884, a new con- 
stitution was given to Jamaica. The present Govern- 
ment consists of the Governor, who is President of 
the Legislative Assembly, the Senior Military Officer, 
the Colonial Secretary, the Attorney-General, and the 
Director of Public Works. In addition to these are 
five members appointed by the Crown, and nine elected 
by tax-payers of upwards of twenty shillings. There 
are fourteen electoral districts. Jamaica — which re- 
tains the old Indian name Xaymaca, " a land abounding 
in springs" — is divided into three political divisions 
called counties. They are known as Middlesex, Surrey, 
and Cornwall respectively. These are sub-divided into 
fourteen parishes, the affairs of each being managed 
by a Parochial Board, 






POSTAL AKRANGEMENTS 33 

The Jamaican legislation has the power to pass 
laws applying to the Turks and Caicos Islands ; the 
Supreme Court of Jurisdiction extending to these 
islands in matrimonial and divorce cases. 

It was at Turks Islands that we first saw land 
on approaching the West Indies. They are a group 
lying to the south-east of the Bahamas, and were 
so called from a peculiar kind of cactus which 
grows there, somewhat resembling a Turkish fez. 
The largest of them is 7 miles long, and 1J 
miles broad. Salt is exported from them, about 
1,500,000 bushels being annually shipped to the 
United States. It was midnight when we stopped 
and made our presence known to the Postal and 
Telegraph Office on shore by signalling. I looked 
out of my port-hole and saw a long stretch of coast, 
slightly hilly, but it was too indistinct to see much. 
The distance we were from the shore I presumed 
to be not more than a mile. Presently I saw a small 
sailing boat come close to the big steamer, and in 
the dim light receive an emaciated-looking mail-bag, 
which we had surveyed previously, when brought up 
to be in readiness to hand over to the postal authorities. 
A precocious small boy, who was permitted to feel the 
sealed-up bag, declared there was only one letter inside. 

A stay of twenty minutes sufficed to exchange 
mails and to receive the latest British telegrams. 
Everybody was then keen to know how the Education 
Bill was progressing at home. 

The whole of the succeeding day we coasted along 
the northern shores of Hayti. Universal wonder was 

c 



34 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

expressed that so exquisite a spot was permitted by 
Providence to become that which Ruskin said of 
Naples, " a paradise inhabited by devils." As a nation 
we are suffering for the sins committed by our fore- 
fathers in bringing the "devils" away from their 
primeval forests. Yesterday an American lady said 
to me anent the negro, "He ought never to have 
been brought to these islands/' and went on to declare 
that we should not only pray to be delivered from 
evil, but quite as much from the consequences of 
other people's evil, which generally fall upon the 
innocent more than the guilty, so I think we may 
profitably take thought for the morrow when we 
contemplate any particular course of action. 

Many philanthropically-disposed persons consider 
that the blacks were better off under kind and 
considerate masters, before the days of emancipation, 
than in these days when each nigger does exactly as 
he pleases. The present situation, to my mind, seems 
precisely the same as that of a number of unruly 
schoolboys suddenly let loose from proper control and 
discipline. 

It was the morning of Saturday, 22nd November, 
w T hen we came in sight of Jamaica — but before the 
early hour at which everyone appeared dressed, so as 
not to lose the first sight of the beautiful mountainous 
outline — an event of some importance occurred. Bells 
were ringing long before daylight, and a great com- 
motion was going on below amongst the main-deck 
cabins ; I put on my dressing-gown, and, finding a 
stewardess with her arms full of soaked bedclothes, 



AN EARTHQUAKE SHOCK 35 

asked what on earth was the matter. Three of the 
cabins on the port side had been completely swamped, 
she told me. Since everybody had packed to be in 
readiness to land, it was more than awkward to have 
the clothes they were going to put on that morning 
simply saturated. One lady, whose berth lay immedi- 
ately under the open port, said she had been rudely 
awakened by a volume of water streaming over her. 
Before she had recovered her breath another equally 
huge sea poured into the cabin ; she had never been 
more alarmed in her life. The sea was so perfectly 
smooth, I could not understand it. The time was 
between the hours of three and four, and, so far as 
we knew, we were off Port Morant. However, an 
hour or so after, our wonder was set at rest, for the 
pilot who came on board to take us up Kingston 
Harbour advertised the fact that an earthquake shock 
had been felt that morning at Port Royal, and that 
there had not been so severe a one for thirty years. 
This, thought I, was a nice introduction to the volcanic 
sphere of action. 

There is a narrow strip of land about 7 miles in 
length enclosing the harbour of Kingston to the south- 
ward, and Port Royal is situated at the western 
extremity of it. The town was, before the great earth- 
quake of 1692, says Leslie in his Jamaican " History," 
the finest town in the West Indies, and at that time the 
richest spot in the universe. It figured in the early 
colonial history of this island as the emporium of the 
ill-gotten riches of those raiders of the Spanish Main, 
the buccaneers, who squandered their gains in riotous 



36 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

living and gambling. The wealth poured into Port 
Koyal by these pirates was enormous. They intercepted 
all vessels traversing those seas. Every Spanish ship 
was a rich prize. If outward bound to the Indies they 
were laden with the choicest products aud manufactures 
of the home country, the glass of St Ildefonso, silks 
and serges from Valencia, porcelain of Alcora, cordage 
from Carthagena, Castille soap, Toledo cutlery, the fine 
wool of Spain's merino sheep, with the wine and oil 
and almonds and raisins produced by Spain in common 
with Italy and the Greek islands. If they were return- 
ing home to Europe the Spanish galleons were loaded 
with ingots of gold and silver. The disposal of these 
prizes, which were numerous, made a golden harvest 
for the merchant ; while the riot and revelry of the 
sailors, recklessly spending their share of the plunder, 
enriched the retailers ; and the traffic of this far-famed 
mart laid the foundation of dowries for duchesses and 
endowments for earldoms. The Eector of Port Eoyal, 
at the time of the great earthquake, thus describes the 
awful occurrence : " Whole streets with their inhabitants 
were swallowed up by the opening of the earth, which, 
when shut upon them, squeezed the people to death, and 
in that manner several were left with their heads above 
ground, and others covered with dust and earth by the 
people who remained in the place. It was a sad sight 
to see the harbour covered with dead bodies of people 
of all conditions floating up and down without burial, 
for the burying-place was destroyed by the earthquake, 
which dashed to pieces tombs, and the sea washed the 
carcases of those who had been buried out of their 



POET ROYAL 37 

graves." The ruins of the old city are still to be seen 
in clear weather under the surface of the water, and 
divers occasionally find relics in their explorations. 
Attempts to rebuild the place were frustrated first by a 
great fire in 1703, and subsequently by a great storm 
in 1722, which swept many of the buildings into the 
sea, destroying much shipping and many lives. On 
that day fifty vessels were in the harbour : out of that 
number four men-of-war and two merchantmen alone 
succeeded in getting away. 

At the present day Port Royal holds an important 
position as a naval station. It contains the official 
residence of the Commodore and Staff of H.M. ships 
serving on the North American and West Indian 
station ; the dockyard is fully equipped with machinery 
and steam-engines to repair the warships and refit them 
after injuries sustained. There is also a fine naval 
hospital, which can be made to accommodate two 
hundred patients if required. The defences of Port 
Royal have latterly been much improved, new batteries 
having been added to the fortifications. 

It was after the fire of 1703 that Kingston, the 
present capital of Jamaica, began to grow in importance. 
a law being passed declaring that henceforth Kingston 
was to be the chief seat of trade and head port of entry ; 
but the place was unpopular, and Spanish Town, built 
originally by the Spaniards and the seat of government, 
remained practically the chief town in the island for 
many years. 

There could be nothing more beautiful than the 
entry into Kingston Harbour as I saw it. The Blue 



38 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

Mountains in the background were free from the cloudy 
embrace which so often veils the peaks, a lower range 
of hills clad with verdant green up to their summits 
lay between us and them. On our right was the 
promontory of Port Eoyal, with its red tiled roofs, 
waving palms, green foliage and yellow sands. In 
front, like a watch-dog, lay stretched upon the shining 
waters the Urgent, the guardship of the naval station. 
To our left the coast presented a semi-circular sweep, 
and over the green of the mangrove swamps, on which 
trees oysters grow, one saw in the distance the churches 
and warehouses of Kingston. Shortly after passing the 
entrance of the harbour, which is but a mile in width, 
a gun was fired to announce the arrival of the Direct 
Mail from England. Everyone was attentively admir- 
ing the beautifully situated harbour as we slowly 
steamed up to the company's wharf. J. T. Froude says : 
" The associations of the place no doubt added to the 
impression. Before the first hut was run up in 
Kingston, Port Eoyal was the rendezvous of all English 
ships which for spoil or commerce frequented the 
West Indian seas. Here the buccaneers sold their 
plunder and squandered their gains. Here in the later 
century of legitimate wars whole fleets were gathered 
to take in stores, or refit when shattered by engage- 
ments. Here Nelson had been, and Collingwood and 
Jervis, and all our naval heroes. Here prizes were 
brought in for adjudication, and pirates to be tried and 
hanged. In this spot more than in any other beyond 
Great Britain herself, the energy of the Empire was 
once throbbing." 



END OF COLUMBIAN WAR 39 

Such was the past, and if the everlasting hills had 
looked down upon scenes of glorious days in the annals 
of our monarchy, as well as upon the inglorious ones of 
privateering, of cruelty, of rapine and of avarice, who 
could tell what were the possibilities of the future ? 
Whilst we had journeyed out from England the three 
years of Columbian internecine warfare had drawn to a 
conclusion. Now there is a chance — indeed certainty, 
since the Americans have taken it in hand — that the 
Panama Canal may become a reality in years to come, 
instead of the failure " of the greatest undertaking of 
our age." When the Atlantic is united with the Pacific 
who can tell what future greatness lies before Kingston, 
being, as she is, the best harbour in the West Indies, and 
from her geographical situation the natural intermediate 
port for coaling. When this great watery highway is 
established, what new markets will be opened to West 
Indian industries ! 

Millions' worth of rusty machinery, never yet un- 
packed, lies buried in the mud of Darien, sent out when 
money was more plentiful than brains, and when 
swindling ranked with the fine arts. Thousands of lives 
have been lost in the swamps and jungles of the tropics 
over the so-far futile project of M. de Lesseps. No 
worse spot in the world could be found where nature 
resists the invasion of science and the enterprise of the 
European. In the hot tropical jungle, deadly snakes, 
alligators, mosquitoes and centipedes abound. 

The unfortunate blacks, who rushed to Darien as to 
an expectant gold-field, attracted thither by the dollars 
their fellows were earning, were stricken down with 



40 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

yellow fever, dysentery, and typhus in countless 
numbers. 

For all this, it has rightly been believed by many 
that some day, sooner or later, the commercial progress 
of the world will demand the execution of this appar- 
ently impossible scheme. Now we confidently look to 
America to see it successfully completed. 

To return to the world of actualities, I gazed 
interestedly down from the decks of the Port Antonio 
to the quay where we were to land. The mahogany- 
coloured occupants of numerous small boats shouted up 
to us, gesticulating and laughing as they showed their 
beautiful white teeth. Meanwhile, the great ship slowly 
approached her moorings. Then a detachment of a 
West Indian regiment, marching to the sound of a band, 
approached, and took up a position exactly in front of us. 

Directly the gangway was accessible a troop of officials 
thronged up on deck to pay their respects to the 
Governor. The band struck up a popular air, the 
soldiers were inspected, and Sir Augustus Hemming 
with his friends passed out of sight. People came 
streaming on board to greet their home-returning 
relatives and friends, whilst every religious community 
seemed to be represented in the motley groups of black- 
coated men who had come to receive the delegates from 
Keswick. 

" They are going to have a high old time," irreverently 
remarked a stray black sheep amongst my fellow- 
passengers, speaking collectively of the black-garbed 
ecclesiastics. I found some friends waiting for me, who 
very kindly steered me and my belongings through the 



THE DIKECT LINE 41 

custom-house, which is quite close to the landing-stage, 
and proved to be no ordeal whatever, since I had no 
merchandise to account for. My trunks were given 
into the care of a porter from Constant Spring Hotel, 
and I had no further trouble with them. My friends 
got a " bus/' as the buggies are called in Kingston, and 
we drove a very short distance, when I entered the 
electric tram which every twenty minutes runs between 
the town and the hotel, six miles away. 

For the benefit of intending visitors to Jamaica I 
may here mention that Messrs Elder, Dempster & Co., 
who own the Direct Mail Service by which I travelled, 
and which some two years ago was called into 
existence by Mr Chamberlain in his efforts to help 
the West Indies, are also the proprietors of the two 
best hotels Jamaica possesses: Myrtle Bank in the 
town of Kingston, and Constant Spring, 6 miles off 
in the country. 

My intention was to go first of all to the latter, 
especially as I heard how hot Kingston is in the 
daytime. I learnt, too, that a voucher from Constant 
Spring Hotel enabled you to take what meal you chose 
at their other hotel in town and vice versa. I had 
several purchases to make, so that if I were to be busy 
shopping in the heat of the day, so much the more 
advantageous would it be to ensure cool nights. 

I cannot say that I admire Kingston ; in fact I 
consider all West Indian towns best at a distance. The 
electric trams are a great boon, and an eminently 
satisfactory mode of transit. The American lady of 
smoking-room fame joined me en route for the hotel. 



42 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

She could not refrain, when she saw the sugar-cane as 
we passed the market, from buying some. She said it 
reminded her of her home in California, and, much to 
the amusement of the blacks opposite, she brought out 
a knife and insisted on teaching me how to eat cane. 
This was my first acquaintance with Jamaican blacks ; 
but I still turn round to admire the country women 
striding along with Heaven only knows what in those 
heaped-up baskets on their heads, to which they seem 
to give not a thought. For the most part, they wear 
clean print gowns, short, fastened up below the waist 
behind, so as not to impede their gait — I have since 
read that no women in the world walk better or can 
poise such weights on their heads as they can. Very 
charming country houses with nice gardens line the 
road, when once one is out of the town right away to 
Constant Spring. We paid fourpence for our ride, and 
at the end of it, walked up a path sheltered with 
trellised arches and covered with alamander, bougain- 
villia, scarlet hibiscus, with nicely laid-out gardens 
on each side of us, arriving in due course at the 
central entrance of the hotel. Having secured rooms 
adjoining, with verandahs looking out on to the garden, 
and beyond that the golf links, which we learnt, 
together with a new wing, were to be opened in a few 
days, we repaired to the spacious dining-room, which 
takes the whole breadth of the building, as indeed do all 
the sitting-rooms. Thus, with balconies on either side, 
one can always find a cool spot. My friend and I chose 
a table and ordered lunch. The fair Delicia swept 
ponderously past us. 



CONSTANT SPEING HOTEL 43 

" Oh ! won't you come and lunch with us ? " asked my 
companion in the kindest manner. 

"Thank you," returned that important spinster in 
acrid accents ; " I have my own table prepared for me," 
and she followed the manager to another part of the 
room, where henceforth she was always to be seen alone 
in her grandeur. 

" My goodness ! " exclaimed the charming American, 
when her pomposity had betaken herself to a safe 
distance, " if I'd guessed she was that crabby I'd have 
saved my breath. She has put on empty-headed side 
since she struck this hotel ! " 

Several of our fellow-passengers found their way up 
to Constant Spring during the course of the afternoon. 
The little journalist made tracks for the fair Delicia. 

We found some nice people staying at the hotel, 
amongst them the inevitable British matron, who was 
shocked at so many things that I wondered how it was 
she could stay in a land where so much human anatomy 
is in evidence, as it certainly is in this island. 

For people who want a warm climate to winter in, 
pleasant society, and a comfortable hotel in which to 
stay, I consider Constant Spring Hotel a very charming 
resort. The building is large, and extends over a good 
deal of ground. You enter a large central hall, where 
small tables used for afternoon tea are scattered about, 
with most comfortable chairs and lounges. The stair- 
cases on either side lead to a gallery above, from 
which you look down upon the scene below. From 
this hall, on your right, you pass through the large 
drawing-room to the dining-room ; on your left, you 



44 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

enter into the reading-room, which is nicely fitted up 
with half-a-dozen writing tables, whilst a table in the 
centre is covered with magazines and papers ; this room 
is carpeted throughout, so that persons walking through 
do not disturb you when reading or writing. Passing 
through this room you come to the ping-pong 
and billiard-rooms. Another great advantage is that 
there is a first-rate swimming bath belonging to the 
hotel, and which is open to both ladies and gentlemen 
at certain hours. The expenses of a winter residence 
in this hotel would not be greater than at any similar 
one in the south of France, about fifteen shillings a day ; 
but for a permanent stay, or visit of some weeks, 
advantageous terms could be made. I should advise 
people writing from England and engaging rooms to 
be careful to ask for them on the north side, which is 
the cool side, looking out towards the Blue Mountains. 
Visitors to Jamaica, coming out with introductions to 
a few residents, would soon find themselves in very 
pleasant society at Kingston, and during the winter 
months there are a good many garden-parties, dinners, 
and dances, both at the hotels and in the neighbourhood. 
Besides the naval station at Port Eoyal there is a 
garrison at Newcastle which is situated some 4000 
feet above sea-level ; I it appears that formerly our 
soldiers were quartered in mangrove swamps : the 
Government has of late years gone to the opposite 
extremes. Now their habitation is amongst the clouds. 
There is no doubt about the healthy situation of this 
eyrie in the mountains ; but one pities the poor fellows 
condemned to an exile of two or three years in this 



THE MONGOOSE 45 

isolated spot. The temperature in this elevated region 
never rises beyond 70° and never drops below 60°. 
The officers, although they can descend occasionally 
from the misty heights, must be bored beyond de- 
scription. There is absolutely nothing to hunt, nothing 
to shoot ; the mongoose has eaten up every partridge, 
as it has exterminated snakes, and driven the remain- 
ing rats into dwelling-houses. 



CHAPTER VI 

SUITABLE CLOTHING — PEDESTRIANS IN JAMAICA — 
SELF-HELP SOCIETY 

Before I launch out into ecstasies over the tropical 
scenery, and the luxuriant multiplicity of the flora 
of this island, I intend to rid my memory of certain 
precautionary information with which I consider, at 
this juncture, it will be well to acquaint any reader 
who may be meditating a visit to this part of the 
world. 

In the matter of dress I advise those who wish to see 
the island scenery to leave their heavy luggage at either 
of the hotels they choose to stay at when first landing. 
Since the interior parts of the island are in many 
places only accessible either on horseback, as to houses 
high up in the Blue Mountains, or as Mandeville, by 
long drives in buggies from the railway stations, it is 
advisable to carry only a limited amount of what one 
absolutely requires in bags, portmanteaus, or bundles 
tightly strapped in waterproof cases. I cannot do 
better than warn persons of the tropical rains which 
are so frequent in the West Indian islands. Do not 
time your visit either in May or October, for these are 

46 



SUITABLE CLOTHING 47 

the rainy months, but you are always liable to sudden 
out-pourings at other times of the year and in the 
finest weather. These rains drench you to the skin 
often before you can find shelter, and the danger of 
catching fever is great if you do not at once change 
your w T et clothing. Personally, I consider the water- 
proof cloak which Messrs Elvery in Conduit Street, W., 
supply for tropical countries about the most suitable 
that I have seen. For everyday wear, washing skirts 
and blouses, the latter without lining, are by far the 
best ; a light, fine serge dress will be useful for a sojourn 
amongst the mountains , where fires are sometimes 
necessary in the evening, and blankets are slept under. 
The true test of the Jamaican climate is whether or 
not one can sleep under a woollen cover. Shady hats, 
and one or two silk dresses for evening or Sunday 
wear, are about as much as one wants for a tourist's 
visit of six weeks to a couple of months. 

If, however, you come out to spend the winter at 
Constant Spring Hotel and expect to go much into 
society, you cannot bring out too many smart gowns, 
or too much flummery in the shape of millinery, for the 
heat soon takes the freshness off your airiest confections. 
Let the gowns, however, be such as you would wear 
in the hottest summer in England, and you will then 
be fairly near the mark. 

Whilst I am speaking on the subject of dress I may 
as well acquaint you with the fact that muslins and 
cottons are to be bought here as reasonably as they 
are in England. Some people say they are cheaper, 
and are made and exported especially for colonial use. 



48 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

This probably is a correct version, when it is taken 
into consideration that by law all the blacks have to 
provide themselves with decent clothing. With the 
women, this always takes the form of cotton, either 
as print, drill, pique, or muslin. There are very fair 
dressmakers, who are certainly very moderate in their 
charges, to be found at Kingston. They are excellent 
copyists and clever machinists. Provided they have a 
good pattern they will turn out a well-made skirt for 
about six shillings, and a blouse for a little less. Many 
people coming out from England employ them, and 
there is this to be said in their favour, they do not 
keep you waiting long for your dresses, but generally 
send them to you in two or three days. 

Another important item to be considered in a visit 
to Jamaica is boots. Some persons tell you to get 
a size larger, both in gloves and shoes, than your 
ordinary sizes for coming out here. At any rate, 
provide yourself with soft kid boots coming high up 
the leg, to protect your ankles from the insects which 
seem by preference to attack that particular part of 
your limbs. At Kingston the mosquitoes are virulent, 
here at Mandeville there are scarcely any. But far 
worse than these are the ticks which render it positively 
dangerous to walk in long grass, or to gather at 
random from the country hedges as you take your 
walks. These obnoxious insects are the curse of the 
island ; they attack both man and beast. Years ago 
West Indians say they roamed as children about the 
hills and w^oods, gathering what wild flowers they 
liked, never thinking or troubling about these insects. 



ISLAND INSECTIVOEA 49 

Now the nurses have strict injunctions not to let 
the children wander in long grass for fear of the 
noisome little pests. The introduction of foreign cattle 
into Jamaica some twenty-five years ago accounts for 
their presence ; since then they have increased and 
multiplied till they are a positive plague. In the 
Port Antonio we brought out a number of starlings 
sent by Sir Alfred Jones, who is the moving spirit 
of Elder, Dempster & Co., and who is most energetic 
in his attempts to benefit the island. This gentleman 
hopes they may acquire a taste for ticks in the same 
way the mongoose on its arrival in Jamaica devoted 
his attentions to the extermination of rats and snakes. 
It would indeed be a good thing if they could be 
got rid of. I hear that another gentleman having the 
same object in view has imported a lot of common 
hedge-sparrows. The poor starlings we brought out 
with us suffered terribly from sea-sickness, scarcely 
half of them surviving the journey. The timorous- 
hearted may be thankful that there is nothing in 
the animal or reptile w r orld to be afraid of in country 
rambles. At home we have poisonous snakes, here 
there are none. There are lizards, but the natives 
eat them, and also the land crab. Scorpions are rarely 
met with, and are not considered so dangerous here 
as elsewhere. Ants and sand-flies are found in the 
low-lying lands. The most charming live things are 
the beautiful little humming-birds often seen trembling 
over sweet-smelling tree blossoms. I have often 
watched them flitting over flowering acacia bushes. 
There are twenty different sorts of these enumerated 

D 



50 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

by a naturalist called Goese. Those I have generally 
seen have bright bodies of metallic shimmering peacock 
green, with black feathers on the head, tail and back. 

To return to the subject of dress. Gentlemen will 
find their summer suits and flannels indispensable ; 
they should also provide themselves with good 
macintoshes. 

For an athlete, or indeed for anybody possessed 
of good walking powers, it is not impossible to take 
a walking trip over part of this island — especially 
as there are small weekly boats starting from Kingston 
every Tuesday, stopping at the various ports and 
harbours as they make the circuit of Jamaica. These 
call at each place for fruit on behalf of the American 
Fruit Company, whose boats run between Port Antonio 
and Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. 
The chief harbours are Port Morant, Kingston, Old 
Harbour, Green Island, Montego Bay, Falmouth, Port 
Maria, St Ann's Bay, Lucea, and Port Antonio ; these 
boats stop at all these. The island of Jamaica itself 
is only 144 miles at its extreme length, and its greatest 
width is 49 miles. From Kingston to Annotto Bay 
on the north coast it is only 21 J miles. The roads 
are exceptionally good throughout, thanks to Sir H. 
A. Blake, and there is no reason why a good pedestrian 
should not fix upon Jamaica as a fitting spot to be 
done on shankses' pony, provided always he be suitably 
dressed, and commences his peregrinations at sunrise, 
rests from 11 a.m to 4 p.m., and takes up his journey 
then till dusk, or as far into the night as he pleases. 
The same applies to bicycling and to riding on horseback. 



JAMAICAN FKUITS 51 

There is this to be said to people who cannot 
accommodate themselves to somewhat primitive con- 
ditions of existence, or who are not in the 
enjoyment of at least moderately good health : they 
should not come to the West Indies at all. In the 
first place, the excessive heat in the middle of the 
day is decidedly trying ; even the strongest take 
some time to become acclimatised. Then the food 
is not the same as English people are used to — that 
is, in the country lodging-houses and hotels. To 
this day I abstain from salt-fish and akee, a 
favourite West Indian breakfast dish ; nor can I acquire 
a taste for the Avocado pear, which is eaten as a 
salad, but which to me seems identical with soft soap. 
Papaw too, which is handed round for dessert, I find 
as unpalatable as mangoes ; both the latter are, how- 
ever, considered delicious by West Indians notwith- 
standing the flavour of turpentine which characterises 
the latter. Yams are nice ; they resemble potatoes. 
The garden egg and Cho Choes are also acceptable, 
the latter resembling greatly our vegetable marrow. 

At Constant Spring Hotel I first became acquainted 
with Jamaican fruits, and the profusion and quantity 
of them, together with their cheapness, constitute 
one of the most agreeable features in the island house- 
keeping. Grape fruit, delicious tangerines, too ripe 
for export, juicy pines, cool water-melons, bananas 
ad lib., were always piled up in a big central dish 
on our breakfast table. Along the road-sicles here, 
at Mandeville, from whence I am writing these 
pages, oranges and grape fruit fall off the trees, and 



52 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

nobody considers it worth their while to pick them 
up. The waste of ripe fruit seems enormous, where 
the means of transit are not present to convey it 
to a shipping port. 

One of the most delicious things they give you 
at this hotel is guava jelly served with cocoa-nut 
cream. Indeed the table is unexceptionally good, also 
both at Myrtle Bank and Constant Spring. 

The day following my arrival being Sunday I did 
not leave the hotel, but completed a somewhat large 
correspondence I wanted to send via America. Letters 
sent to England via the Atlas Steamship Company's 
vessels to the States reach home in twelve days ; 
you can also send them by the Direct Mail and 
the Eoyal Mail Service. There are innumerable 
places of worship, not only in Kingston but all over 
the island ; in fact the Church of England, Eoman 
Catholics, Presbyterians, Wesleyans, Methodists, and 
Moravians, all do their best to keep the population 
in that narrow path where to convince them of sin 
seems to be the favourite doctrine. No doubt the 
attractions of the broad way which leads to destruction 
require pointing out vigorously to the semi-heathen 
intelligence ; but from expositions I heard in non- 
conformist chapels, 1 wondered what form of amuse- 
ment was left open to " believers." 

Once I was present at Cambridge when a venerable 
American bishop, since dead, but known as the " Apostle 
of the Indians/' uttered the following words, which I 
have never forgotten, The occasion was the centenary 
of a religious society. Preachers of different persua- 







SHOPPING AT KINGSTON 53 

sions had spoken of the advance of the society in 
their own particular sectarian sphere. "Far be it 
from me to present to the heathen a divided 
Christianity ! " I hear that the puzzled wits of the 
woolly-haired race do give way occasionally under 
the strain of theological pressure. I travelled with 
a poor black, afflicted with religious mania, from St 
Thomas to Antigua, and a doctor told me that there 
was a good deal of it amongst the natives. 

As I had several purchases to make and to expedite 
by the Port Antonio on its homeward passage, I pre- 
pared myself for a long day's shopping on Monday, 
and indeed I did very little else before going to the 
first official garden-party at King's House on the 
Friday following my arrival. 

The town of Kingston has been called in my hearing 
" a collection of shanties," and although I will not give 
my assent quite to this appellation, I cannot honestly 
admire it. Fine buildings it certainly lacks. The 
chief street is Harbour Street, and having once found 
that, the other streets run either at right angles or 
parallel with it. 

My first commission was to order a number of 
tortoiseshell articles, which are made here cheaply and 
well by a man called Andrews. Then it is a nice 
thing to know that you can send your friends a box con- 
taining a hundred oranges properly packed for the sum 
of twelve shillings, provided they do not live beyond 
a certain distance from London. Blue Mountain coffee 
is also an acceptable present. Experts declare that 
there is no better in the world ; and whether it be true 



54 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

or not I cannot tell, but I learnt from apparently 
reliable authority that the Czar is supplied entirely 
with the product of one of these upland plantations. 
Guava jelly made in the island is delicious, and often 
sent home by request of those who have known it out 
here. Indeed I think many families with delicate- 
chested members might do worse than live, for a while 
at least, in Jamaica. House-rent in the upper part of 
the town is not dear, and the houses are well built, 
all of them being surrounded with gardens of varying 
size, where bougainvillia, hibiscus, palm-trees, and the 
crimson-leaved poin-settia are nearly always to be seen. 
The rents of these vary from £50 to £100, according 
to size. They have three postal deliveries per diem. 
Fruit, vegetables and fish are cheap, and prices gener- 
ally most moderate; for instance, beef is sixpence a 
pound, pork, ninepence, bread, threepence, sugar, two- 
pence, coffee, one shilling, fish, sixpence. The dearest 
articles of diet are ham, at eighteenpence, tea, three 
shillings, good butter, eighteenpence to two shillings, 
English cheese, eighteenpence. Fruit and vegetables 
are not worth mentioning ; pines are to be had for 
twopence, and for a penny you can get a dozen bananas. 
The native produce is of course cheap, and you pay 
more in proportion for imported goods. A buggy to 
hold four persons costs, when new, about £40, 
and you can buy sufficiently good horses from £15 to 
£20, and even cheaper; but the town of Kingston 
and environs is so well served by the tramway 
service, and the hire of buggies within the urban 
limits so cheap, that it is quite possible to live com- 



WOMEN'S SELF-HELP SOCIETY 55 

fortably in the suburbs without a conveyance. The 
streets are well lighted by gas, some of the hotels 
and public buildings by electricity. Labour is not 
a very dear item either ; the working hours are from 
6 a.m. to 5 p.m., with an hour off, between 11 and 12 
o'clock. On Saturdays no work is done after 11 
o'clock. Labourers are paid from eighteenpence to 
two shillings a day, women from ninepence to one 
shilling. Many of the domestic servants live away 
from the houses, coming early in the morning, and 
leaving about nine in the evening. In a great many 
households the mistress does not feed the women- 
servants. If there are several, they have a room to 
eat in, providing for themselves; and I should 
imagine this was by far the best way, for the nauseous 
compounds in their stock-pots, when they thus choose 
their own provender, are unsuitable to the stomach of 
any average English domestic servant. Salt-fish in an 
advanced stage of decay is a favourite dish with them, 
but nothing comes amiss, and all finds its way into 
the big pot. 

There are not many curios to be bought in any of 
the West Indian islands, but for what few there are 
it is best to go to the Women's Self -Help Society. Here 
you can get lamp-shades, doyleys, mats of all descrip- 
tions made from lace - bark, and ferns artistically 
arranged ; long chains for the neck, or muff, made 
from native seeds dried and strung together. Those 
which are mostly bought are known locally as " Job's 
Tears " and " Women's Tongues." There was a great run 
on these a week or two back when Dr Lunn's tourist 



56 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

steamer, the Argonaut, put into Kingston Harbour, 
and its passengers, to the number of a hundred and 
thirty, spent £70 on the island curiosities. Great 
joy reigned amongst the lady promoters of the 
Society: such a windfall does not often happen to 
them. 

This " Women's Self-Help Society " was founded by 
Lady Musgrave, the w T ife of a former Governor, and 
was opened in 1879. Apparently there are a number 
of what some of our papers at home are pleased to 
designate as decayed gentlewomen in Jamaica, and 
the object of this industry is to find a sale for all kinds 
of work which they, when industriously inclined, are 
able to do. There is, however, an agency attached to 
it whereby distressed needlewomen can get orders to 
execute for ladies and gentlemen, and there is a stock 
of clothes always kept ready, suitable for servants and 
working people. 

The latest Handbook of Jamaica says of this institu- 
tion : " The Society has been a great boon to many 
people in reduced circumstances who have to work for 
their living, but find it difficult to get suitable employ- 
ment. It also enables other w r onien, who do not require 
the profit of their work for themselves, to earn some- 
thing for charities and philanthropic objects, as well 
as to raise the standard of work by bringing to bear on 
it that cultivated taste and artistic grace which is the 
natural result of a refined education." So much for 
this Society and its aims. I should mention that the 
seeds called " Women's Tongues " are those which hang 
in long pods from a tree called ponciana. When the 



JOB'S TEARS 57 

seeds are dry, and the wind blows the boughs of the 
trees, they rattle in the pods, hence the title. " Job's 
Tears" are the seeds of a plant which bends by the 
water-edge, its melancholy attitude having given rise 
to the name. 



CHAPTEE VII 

DOMINICA'S FLOURISHING CONDITION — SCOTCH DINNER — 
TROPICAL VEGETATION 

Two or three days after my arrival at Constant Spring 
Hotel, I began to feel that my West Indian experi- 
ences would lack any degree of thoroughness if I did 
not include a journey to the Windward and Leeward 
Islands ; how to get to them I had yet to learn. 

I longed to set eyes on the volcanoes. Mont Pel^e 
was said to be continually throwing up huge masses of 
incandescent lava, which, constantly rolling down her 
smoking sides, was altering her geographical shape, 
and choking up a contiguous river-bed. 

The French Government had prohibited any land- 
ing at St Pierre, but a scientific expedition under 
Professor La Croix had the pluck to live in a 
temporarily constructed observatory at the base of 
the mountain, always, I learnt afterwards, in readiness 
to fly at the approach of danger. The undermining 
of the cone going on within the crater threatened 
further eruption, ashes ejected having a temperature 
of 100° Centigrade, after a week's cooling. Eye- 
witnesses gave graphic descriptions of the abomina- 

58 



JAMAICA ENVIES DOMINICA 59 

tion of desolation which La Soufriere had worked 
upon the fertile districts of the north part of St 
Vincent as we sat in the spacious central hall of 
Constant Spring Hotel, whilst estate-owners of Jamaica 
indulged in jeremiads over the financial depression 
reigning here. They pointed in envy to the flourish- 
ing condition of the little island of Dominica, where it 
is apparent that a West Indian colony can get along 
without sugar. It was inspiriting to read how that 
beautiful and well-favoured possession of the Crown 
was forging ahead, in spite of the Eoyal Mail Steam- 
ship Company's prohibitive freight charges, and the 
Sugar Bounties. Apparently people with moderate 
capital have been attracted there sufficiently to 
purchase Crown lands. This is exactly what Jamaica 
needs. The cry here for central sugar factories and 
new-fashioned plant instead of obsolete machinery 
is a loud cry, but that for capital and new blood is 
still louder. In Dominica men have had sufficient 
means to sit down quietly between the planting of 
their cocoa trees and its yielding remunerating returns, 
a matter of from five to six vears. 

One Jamaican paper says of this island : " Its happy 
condition is enough to make a Jamaican gasp with envy. 
The revenue in 1901 amounted nearly to £30,000, 
the highest ever realised in the island. There was 
no increase of taxation, the improvement being entirely 
due to the development of trade, and the increased 
purchasing power of the people. Although consider- 
able sums were spent in the reconstruction and 
improvement of roads, and in other public works, 



60 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

the year closed with an accumulated surplus of 
nearly £6000. Of this amount £4000 have been 
invested as a reserve fund. Think of Jamaica with 
a reserve fund ! How does Dominica manage it ? 
So far as we can see, it has ceased to cultivate 
sugar. During the last decade it has cultivated 
cocoa, and produced lime-juice and its bye-products. 
The value of its cocoa exports has risen from £7000 
to £24,000, while the shipment of lime-juice in 1901 
was valued locally at £35,000. It has also gone in 
for rubber, vanilla, oranges, and other minor products." 

People who are to be believed tell me that the per- 
centage of juice extracted from the cane is 50 per 
cent, below that attainable with modern machinery 
in many parts of the West Indies. It is obvious 
that until up-to-date appliances are substituted for the 
crude and obsolete methods of manufacture, the sugar 
industry has no prosperous outlook before it, nor can 
it hope to compete with beet sugar. 

My intention to visit these islands soon shaped 
itself. I found a couple of fellow-passengers were 
going up to St Thomas in the Danish West Indies 
by the Eoyal Mail steamships, this being their coal- 
ing and repairing station, in reality the ultima thule 
of their inter-colonial voyages in these parts. 

I arranged, therefore, to leave in a week's time on 
the s.s. Para. In the meantime, I hoped to see 
something of the country round Kingston, leaving 
the rest of the island to be visited at the end of 
December. 

The intervening days passed away very pleasantly 






"BONNIE SCOTLAND n 61 

at Constant Spring Hotel. There was a dance on the 
Monday evening ; in fact, all through the winter season 
there is a weekly gathering of this description. 
Officers from the camp, and the principal residents 
to the number of about forty, were present on this 
occasion. Very good music was supplied by the four 
musicians who are engaged to play every afternoon 
in the hotel drawing-room, a pianist, a violincello 
player, and two violinists. Some pretty frocks were 
worn, many of the girls appearing in delicate muslin 
gowns, evidently locally made, but quite adequate to 
the occasion. 

Another day a dinner was given to all the 
Scotchmen in Jamaica, in honour of their national 
saint. The ubiquitous Scot is to be found all over 
creation. There is a story going, that when some 
enterprising explorer finds his way to the North Pole, 
he will find a Scot warming himself at a fire there. 
About one hundred and fifty sat down to a veritable 
Scotch repast. The Governor was the guest of the 
evening. Visitors staying at the hotel sat in the 
verandah outside the dining-room, and listened with 
interest to the after-dinner speeches. Before they got 
to that stage, the national dish, the haggis, was duly 
honoured, being carried round in triumph, preceded by 
the bagpipes, played by a very stately-looking piper. 
This was greeted by the guests with exceeding 
enthusiasm, Some of the speeches were quite 
eloquent, notably so was that of Dr Gordon, the 
Roman Catholic Bishop. He was called upon to 
answer to the toast to a bonnie Scotland." One felt 



62 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

borne away in the spirit to the land of Burns and 
Eob Eoy, as he led his hearers mentally at a canter 
over hill and dale, and across swiftly flowing burns 
fringed with mountain ash, and then plunged them 
into the gloom of mountain fastnesses and forest 
depths. It was time, however, to come back to the 
West Indies at last, and, when the Bishop sat down, 
his word-painting of highland scenery earned for him 
an enthusiastic ovation. After that a guest with a 
considerable flow of language alluded to the fact that 
" Governors come " and " Governors go," but that they 
(the Jamaicans) "went on for ever." Sir Augustus 
Hemming is certainly possessed of tact, and, when- 
ever I have heard him speak, generally seems to say 
the correct thing. On this occasion, once or twice 
things were said which were not quite in good taste, 
but His Excellency adroitly skidded over risky topics, 
ignoring that which had been said, but which it 
would be better in such a gathering to have left 
unsaid. 

I have not yet mentioned the impression I received 
on my first drives and walks in Jamaica. The colour- 
ing is superb. To an artistic mind, there is scarcely 
an hour in the day, when looking on to the hills at 
the back of the hotel, that a beautiful view is not 
to be obtained. Sometimes the mountain summits are 
veiled in white mists, but at sunset the colours are 
grand, and for that only are, to my mind, worth the 
journey to Jamaica. The foliage and the parasitical 
growth, the hanging festoons which drape from tree to 
tree, must be seen to be appreciated. Tropical vegeta- 



GENEROSITY OF NATURE 63 

tion is in all its glory here. Innumerable ferns and 
palm-trees wave in the air along the banks of the 
well-kept roads. Plantains and bananas rear their 
ragged leaves against the sky. Exquisitely green 
cedars (not those we know) are a beautiful feature 
of the landscape, with orange-trees bearing blossom 
and fruit simultaneously. Tamarinds and gums spring 
from rocky crags, shrubs and creepers are everywhere ; 
the latter intertwine themselves in the most wonderful 
way over tree parasites, back again to the road bank, 
then you trace them twenty yards or so further on, 
embracing gigantic stems. Not a single tree seems 
familiar. One feels as if one were always walking in 
a botanical garden ; the wealth of flowering plants, of 
edible fruit and vegetables, strikes one wherever one 
goes. How refreshing and how nourishing are the 
articles of food which Xature, in an open-handed 
generosity, not to be found in less favoured climes, 
scatters broadcast over these islands ! If negroes 
have yams, bread-fruit, oranges, bananas, cocoa-nuts, 
growing at their back door without the trouble 
of cultivating them — for anything once stuck into 
the ground will grow — how can you expect them to 
work six days out of seven ? 

Yesterday I was talking to a coffee-planter, who owns 
a large property in this neighbourhood. I asked him 
how he got on with his blacks, for no two planters 
seem to me to agree in their opinions as to the capa- 
bilities of their work-people. 

" I don't have any trouble with them," he replied. 
" I pay 'em well because I find it suits me best, but as 



64 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

to ever imagining they will make decent citizens, 
why, it's out of the question ! The fools might have 
bought us all out by this time, if they had any sense." 

" And made the island a second Hayti ?"I suggested. 

" Well, possibly ! but when they do buy a bit of land 
they ruin it by bad cultivation," said he. 

"I wish they would not live crowded up together 
in those filthy one-roomed huts ! I cannot get over 
my feeling of disgust at them in this respect ! " 

" They might take a bath sometimes ! n he interrupted. 
"They have not any decent pride." He went on to 
speak of their very sketchy covering at coffee harvest- 
ing time, and said he never let his women-folk go near 
them on those occasions. 

This gentleman had been in Jamaica since 1876. 
Sugar, he said, had ruined his family. Coffee was the only 
crop he considered worth cultivating. There was no 
money in oranges — this conclusion I had arrived at myself. 

It was about this time I paid my first visit to Hope 
Gardens. I went with a friend who knew one of the 
officials, and we were taken all over that interesting 
government establishment for the promotion of agri- 
culture. Here plants are introduced, and, if suitable 
to the climate and soil, are propagated. The products of 
Jamaica being purely agricultural, the well-organised 
and scientifically-treated garden and plantations are of 
great help to students. Early last century yams, 
cocoas, maize, and plantains, etc., were first cultivated, 
so as to make the island less dependent upon 
American supplies ; they are spoken of as valuable 
exotics. Indeed it is interesting to learn where 



HOPE GAKDENS 65 

Jamaica obtained her inexhaustible products. In 
Bryan Edward's " History of the British West Indies/' 
vol. 1, p. 475, we are told that in 1782 the mango, 
akee, cinnamon, camphor, jack-tree, kola, date-palm, 
rose-apple, turmeric, and other valuable plants to the 
number of six hundred had been not only introduced, 
but acclimatised in Jamaica. 

Spain furnished oranges, lemons, limes, and citrons. 
The prickly pear came from Mexico. The shaddock 
from China. Guinea-grass, which is most useful for 
cattle, was accidentally brought from the west coast of 
Africa. Sugar-cane was grown here by the Spaniards, 
but first cultivated by the English in 1660. Logwood 
came from Honduras; this is a famous dye-wood and 
has a beautiful blossom. The graceful bamboo was 
brought from Hispaniola. The scarlet flowering akee, 
eaten as a vegetable, came from West Africa in a slaver. 
Pimento is indigenous to the island ; from this tree we 
get allspice. The fustic tree, from which khaki dye is 
produced, is common along the hedgerows ; so is also 
aniseed, which is known medicinally in most of our 
English homes. The nutmeg tree is quite common in the 
West Indies. In Hope Gardens they have specimens 
of every plant grown in the island, and for those fond 
of botany, I can imagine nothing more enjoyable than 
to wander for hours amongst its trees and plants. 
Connected with this government institution the 
Jamaican Agricultural Society make special grants for 
lectures. 

Practical demonstrations on bee-keeping have been 
made throughout the island, and Jamaica honey is 

E 



66 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

considered one of the best which reaches the London 
market. 

Personally, I consider the bread-fruit tree, the 
Jamaican cedar, the beautiful clumps of feathery 
bamboos, about the most beautiful of the trees generally 
met with in country drives. As one walks along the 
grass bordering the road, one may inadvertently step 
upon the sensitive plant, which curls up when touched ; 
but one's attention is incessantly aroused at the 
wonderful growth of cacti and orchids, and what the 
natives call " wild pines," lining the boughs of the trees, 
and fixing themselves in great clumps in the forks of 
the branches. The Palma Christi, or castor-oil plant, 
grows wild. 

Farming here is called pen-keeping, and in some 
districts there are very fine grazing lands. In fact, it 
seems to me that no more productive ground exists 
under Heaven. If the people had more energy as well 
as more capital, it ought to be a little Paradise, barring 
the ticks. A relative of mine described the state of 
Jamaica very aptly when he said, " The indifference of 
the blacks was only equalled by the apathy of the 
Europeans." 



CHAPTEE VIII 

SAVINGS BANKS — KESWICK VIEWS — SPANISH TOWN 

I have been interrupted in my writing this morning by 
listening to a very entertaining conversation going on 
between two maid-servants, both pure negresses, as to 
whether pink or blue chiffon would look best in their 
Sunday hats. The latest fashion is to see smartly- 
dressed black ladies with well-powdered necks and 
faces, wearing huge knots of coloured ribbon on the left 
breast. Everything they can save goes to buy finery. 
Out of four shillings a week, three are spent on dress, 
the fourth feeds them. Much is done to induce them 
to put spare pence into savings banks, which were 
established as early as 1837, depositors receiving 4 \ 
per cent. ; but some years after, a panic ensued, when the 
secretary of a branch bank committed forgery, and was 
sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude. 

In 1870 a Government savings bank supplanted the 
former ; the interest depositors get now is only 2 J per 
cent. The married negress lawfully regards her 
deposits as her own special property. That this is a 
praiseworthy as well as useful institution is proved by 

67 



68 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

the fact that there were on the 31st of March 1900 
32,860 depositors, including charities, societies, clubs 
and public functionaries investing in their official 
capacities. To assist people to deposit smaller sums, 
there are now penny banks established in different 
parts of the island by influential persons and clergy- 
men. In 1897 there were forty-three of these with 
11,703 depositors. The currency is the same as in 
England, but there are nickel pennies in circulation and 
paper notes for sovereigns. I studiously avoid taking 
the latter, and insist on English gold : the dirty things 
are detestable. Yesterday I went into a store at 
Mandeville to buy some trifle, and I saw two black 
damsels trying the effect of transparent muslin over 
their dusky arms ; that with the biggest pattern was 
chosen, it was " preetty fe trew," they thought. 

I am indebted to a Kingston clergyman for many 
amusing negro stories ; having lived here over thirty 
years he has quite a fine collection. This is one. A 
negro stood chatting with the blacksmith in his shop. 
After a while he broke out, " Hi, me smell fire burn ! " 
With a frightful exclamation he gave a jump, and 
found he had been standing on a piece of iron just out 
of the fire, but it had taken some time for the heat to 
penetrate the hoof ! 

A coloured man wrote thus to a clergyman : — 

" Dear Minister, — My mother is dead, and expects 
to be buried this afternoon at four o'clock. Please 
come and administer over her remains." 

Another story tells of an irreligious young clerk who 






"THE DOCTOR" 69 

often teased one of the head men about his piety and 
church-going. On Monday morning the chaff began 
as usual. 

"You went to church again yesterday, you old 
rascal." 

" Yes, buckra," replied he, " me go a church, sah ! 
but de trange ting is me hear 'bout you, sah, during 
service." 

" Yes, you hear about me, eh ! " 

"Yes, sah, parson read de word, c De fool hat said 
in his heart dere is no god.' " 

One day I read in the newspapers that the Keswick 
delegates were to give their last service at ^Kingston, 
before setting off on an evangelising tour throughout 
the island. 

A fellow-passenger on the Port Antonio said he 
would like to hear them. We arranged to dine at 
Myrtle Bank Hotel, and go afterwards to the place of 
worship where the service was to take place. This 
hotel has an entrance into it from Harbour Street ; 
the gardens on the other side of the building go 
down to the water's edge, and are cool and invit- 
ing. Generally a breeze, known as "the doctor," 
from the sea is blowing, which makes it deliciously 
refreshing. 

We dined shortly after six, and were whirled in a 
"'bus" for sixpence to Coke Chapel, a large edifice 
furnished with galleries. Crowds were fighting to 
get in. Fortunately, the official black is still imbued 
with the idea of the superiority of the white people, but 
how long that will last if the social democrat is allowed 



70 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

to preach the equality of the black with the white, is a 
question a wiser head than mine may solve. On this 
occasion, my friend and I were shown with much 
respect to seats near the pulpit. There w^ere mostly 
coloured people in our immediate vicinity; a little 
further away faces of ebony and mahogany made up 
the rest of the large congregation. All looked serious, 
expectant, prosperous, too, if one were justified in 
judging by the clothes they wore. The service began 
by a hymn, followed by extempore prayer. The sing- 
ing was congregational and hearty. The blacks love 
singing hymns ; one hears old familiar tunes hummed 
constantly wherever one goes. 

But the addresses were what they all came for. The 
delegates from Keswick were both good speakers, and 
they fairly riveted the attention of their hearers. 
However, a more unpractical Christianity, a more 
uninviting picture of the religious life as laid down 
by these Evangelists, it has never been my lot to 
listen to. Calvin and Knox flourished over three 
centuries ago. Eevivalists nowadays preach on gentler 
lines. 

These childish, ignorant, irresponsible, but happy- 
hearted children of the South were told that smoking, 
drinking, card-playing, dancing-parties, love-making, 
novel-reading, society-going were incompatible with the 
Christian life. If they wanted to enjoy such things 
they were imperatively bidden to leave the church. In 
this instance, that meant membership of nonconformist 
bodies. I learnt from the local newspapers, which 
indiscriminately praised the work of the delegates, that 



KESWICK VIEWS 71 

they upheld a high standard of spiritual life. It may 
be so. But of what use is it to describe the unattainable 
and the impossible, seeing that negro human nature is 
limited in its perceptions and in its capabilities, and a 
white man would think twice before he made such 
wholesale renunciations ! The young women present 
were enjoined to keep themselves to themselves ; they 
were not to seek husbands, the Lord would provide 
them ! What about English church-going spinsters ? I 
wondered. Many of them had not chosen the better 
part. 

That they should not desire to go into society was 
impressed upon them, since that often led to trouble. 
To exemplify this teaching the Old Testament story of 
Dinah as given in Genesis was taken as the text. I 
have since looked it up. It belongs to the unreadable 
stories of the Pentateuch, but the gist of it, as presented 
to the mixed assembly, was, that Dinah, said the preacher, 
probably like many in front of him, "wanted more 
society than home afforded, so she called to see the 
daughters of the land." Just in the same way they 
might go to tea at different houses in Kingston. Harm 
came of it, for she met somebody who got her into 
trouble, and the end of it was her lover was killed. 
The moral of the story was obvious. Safety was only 
to be found in staying at home ! Practical persons 
say the best teaching for these people is that of example. 
If they see English people live well-ordered lives, they 
will in time learn to copy them in the same way as 
they copy English dress. Many of them are really 
stupid ; they seem unable to retain what they hear. 



72 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

A lady tells me that her servants can never repeat 
the text, nor give a reasonable account of what 
they have heard at church. She asked a girl who 
had that day been to Sunday School, it being "Whit 
Sunday : 

" Who is the Comforter you heard about ? " 

The lady who taught the class was the clergyman's 
wife. 

" Judas Iscariot, missus," promptly and unabashed 
came the reply. 

And this, she tells me, is a specimen of how they 
jumble up Bible names and stories. No doubt there is 
a physiological solution to this muddle-headedness, 
but it must be particularly trying for those who would 
like to really improve them. 

The next day I went with several people from the 
hotel to a garden-party at King's House. The 
afternoon was very hot ; fortunately it became slightly 
cooler by 4.30 : the reception was from half -past four 
to six o'clock. Their Excellencies received us at the 
entrance of the gardens. Guests to the number of 
about one hundred and fifty had arrived ; very few 
government officials were present, and altogether, as 
a representative gathering of the best people in the 
island, I admit we did not think much of it. A lady 
resident told me the cause of so limited a number 
taking the trouble to come was of course the un- 
popularity of the lady who presides over the entertaining 
at King's House. We chatted to those we knew, 
strolled about the grounds. The house, which is unpre- 
tentious, is situated in a hundred acres, containing 



SPANISH TOWN 73 

some beautiful shrubs and rare plants. Kefreshments 
were served under the trees. It grew dark. We sought 
our carriage, and returned to the hotel in time to dress 
for dinner. I was determined to take one expedition 
into the country before leaving for the islands, so on 
the Saturday I started from Constant Spring Hotel with 
a friend by a tram, leaving shortly after six to catch the 
first train to Spanish Town, from which place we 
intended to take a carriage to the Eio Cobre. This 
town, the capital of the Spaniards, was called San 
Jago de la Vega ; it is not particularly interesting. The 
Governor's residence was here till quite recently. In 
the banqueting-hall and ball-room one may picture one 
scenes w T hich took place in the days of West Indian 
prosperity at the King's House in Spanish Town. We 
found the most interesting object to be the cathedral, 
where lie interred many early Governors, their wives, 
and some of the first settlers of the island. The 
architecture is simple, though varied. The verger, 
who conducted us to the top of the tower and pointed 
out the principal objects, was interesting in the fact 
that he had been born there and evidently loved every 
stone of the place. He directed our gaze to one of the 
oldest epitaphs. It ran — 

" Here lyeth the body of Dame Elizabeth, 
the Wife of Sir Thomas Modyfort, Baronet, 
Governor of his Majesty's Island of 
Jamaica, who died the 12th of November 
1668 being the 20th year of their happy 
wedded life.'' 



74 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

A marble statue of Queen Victoria stands in the 
public Square, and bears the inscription — 

VICTORIA 

of Great Britain and Ireland 

Queen 

Empress of India 

and of Jamaica Supreme Lady 

1837-1901. 

We did not go to see the United Fruit Company's 
plantation of bananas, oranges and pines, but I believe 
it well repays a visit, so does the Cayman sugar estate, 
where some of the best rum is made. 

We preferred to take a drive up the Rio Cobre of 
about nine miles. This is really beautiful ; the road 
winds along the course of the river, and the luxuriant 
growth on either bank is simply wonderful to a person 
fresh from home and new to tropical scenery. Huge 
banana-trees, enormous clumps of bamboo, meet one at 
every turn in the road. We extracted a good deal of 
information from our driver, although we could not 
always understand him. Bare-legged women with 
skirts tucked up passed us with the inevitable yam- 
laden basket on their heads, crowned with the hat 
which was to cover the woolly hair of the lady 
when she set down her load ; one or two begged for 
quatties, an old Spanish word still used and re- 
presenting one penny halfpenny in our money. It is 
not often the natives beg of you, although they will 
turn round and tell you how much they love you ! 
We had a delightful but very hot day, and did not 



GAKDEN-PAKTY 75 

get back till quite late in the evening. There was 
one more event which I have to record before closing 
these pages for a time on Jamaica. This was the 
opening of a new wing added during the last year to 
the hotel. 

Tourists, apparently, are beginning to make this island 
into a favourite winter resort, the consequence being 
that increased accommodation was needed. Elder, 
Dempster and Co., who own the hotel, were celebrating 
the event by giving a garden-party. Their agent, Mr 
Haggart, had arrived. The Governor was expected, and 
people were arriving in crowds, making a gay picture of 
the lawns in front of the hotel, where a West Indian 
band from one of the regiments was playing. It was 
nearly five o'clock when the gubernatorial party arrived. 
Their Excellencies were conducted over the new part of 
the building, afterwards to the new golf links, upon 
which Sir Augustus played the first round. The most 
important part of the programme consisted in his speech, 
in which he formally opened the new wing. He spoke 
ably, and congratulated the Company on their enter- 
prising spirit, and hoped a new tide of success was about 
to float the island into a more prosperous condition. 
Her ladyship stood close by, as he spoke ; so did the 
venerable, but tuft-hunting Delicia, so did the in- 
dustrious Eussian journalist, taking notes the while, but 
I looked in vain for persons of importance supporting 
their chief. I wondered where the influential residents, 
the representatives of the mercantile world, and govern- 
ment officials had betaken themselves to, and enquired 
of a well-known lady in Kingston the reason of their 



76 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

absence. It was the old story: they preferred to 
stay away. One felt sorry that things were so. How- 
ever, the afternoon was very enjoyable. The hotel 
provided refreshments in the most generous and hand- 
some way. Everyone present could only hope that 
Jamaica in the near future may be as flourishing as the 
most sanguine of her boomers could desire. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE ROYAL MAIL COMPANY — THE "MUMPISH 
MELANCHOLY" OF JAMAICA 

It was on the 2nd of December, 1902, that I left 
Kingston for my trip to some of the islands in the 
Caribbean Sea, in company with a couple of fellow- 
passengers who had journeyed out with me from 
England in the Port Antonio. In answer to my 
enquiries, the only feasible thing, apparently, to do 
was to travel by the Eoyal Mail Steam Packet 
Company as far as Trinidad, there to be trans-shipped 
into a smaller steamer of that Company, which takes 
cargo and distributes the English mails fortnightly, 
in connection with the out-coming steamers from 
Southampton as far as the Danish island of St Thomas. 
To my disappointment, I learnt that I should have to 
return by the same route to Jamaica, instead of making 
a circuit and visiting Porto Eico, as I had hoped 
to do. 

No regular communication exists between St Thomas 
and Jamaica excepting that of the Eoyal Mail Company, 
although I might have accomplished what I desired 

77 



78 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

had I remained on at St Thomas, and taken the first 
chance steamer, sloop, or schooner, bound for Porto 
Eico, and so on to Jamaica. But I felt this was too 
indefinite and scarcely good enough, St Thomas being 
neither very remarkable nor possessing good accommo- 
dation. As it turned out, I was not sorry to revisit most 
of the islands, especially those of Martinique and St 
Vincent, Dominica and St Lucia, the two latter 
being by far the most beautiful; and I was glad to 
have a chance of seeing the volcanoes twice over 
to impress my memory with their awe-inspiring and 
fearful aspect. 

It is well to know what to do and what not to do in 
the West Indies. Although many, like myself, would 
be naturally desirous to see Nature active in her volcanic 
haunts — for, apparently, as Jamaica is the natural habitat 
of the sugar-cane, so the Caribbean Sea is specially 
marked out for these fiery outpourings of Vulcan — 
I cannot recommend them to follow in my footsteps, 
if they value comfort in the smallest degree. 

In my case it was Hobson's choice. At the office of 
the Eoyal Mail Company at Kingston there was a 
vague talk of tourist ships, later on, being specially 
run to do this trip ; but as no date could be given of 
their probable departure, or certainty entertained as 
to whether they would run at all, I resolved to 
travel by the s.s. Para. The cost of my ticket was £24 ; 
this was at the rate of £1 a day, for I expected to 
be in Jamaica again before the close of 1902. 
At the back of this ticket was written " with tourist 
privileges." What those were I have yet to learn, for 



ROYAL MAIL COMPANY 79 

a more uncomfortable journey I never experienced than 
the fortnight I spent in this Company's steamer, the 

E . You are unfailingly reminded by its officers that 

the R.M.S. was incorporated by Eoyal Charter 1839, and 
since then has had the monopoly of trade with the West 
Indies, and you as often mentally wonder why they 
are letting such a good thing slip through incompetent 
management. The very mention, even, of the Direct 
Company's name has, in some instances on board these 
steamers, been like a red rag to a bull. 

Since, however, I made my journey to the volcanoes 
a new manager has come upon the scene. Things are 
changing, and one is glad to hear of a regular over- 
hauling of both offices at home and ships at sea. 

Personally, I never heard so much grumbling at sea 
in my life as I have from passengers travelling in these 
regions. Perhaps the heat makes them unwarrantably 
irritable. The prohibitive charges on freight have for 
years operated as the great hindrance to the develop- 
ment of the resources of the islands. Indeed, in the 
interests of the Company, it is well that things are 
being looked into. 

The late manager of the Eoyal Mail Company was 
an admiral of the British navy, of whom many stories 
are afloat, showing that he was fearfully and wonder- 
fully made to hold such an important post. Probably 
the man was an expert on shipbuilding and seaman- 
ship ; most likely there his qualifications ended. For 
a purely mercantile undertaking, one cannot suppose 
a retired admiral would possess sufficient commercial 
experience to warrant his efficiency as manager. My 



80 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

own knowledge of naval men would incline me to the 
belief that they would rather laugh to scorn all sug- 
gestions of financial retrenchment. 

There may be, however, some adventurous spirits, 
who, in the face of discomfort, will want once in their 
lives to visit these historical islands, and, however 
they go, they must trans-ship at Trinidad or Barbadoes, 
as I did, into the smaller ships of this Company. Of 
course they can go by Dr Lunn's tourist parties, but 
everybody does not care to visit places in gangs. 

The Para is a comfortable, steady ship, notwith- 
standing her venerable age. The Trent, with her sister- 
ship the Tagus y are very handsomely appointed vessels 
of modern construction, carrying good cooks. 

We had a lovely run in the Para from Kingston to 
Trinidad ; it took three days. We saw no land until 
we approached the Bocas, the two entrances into the 
Gulf of Paria, the Dragon's Mouth, and the Serpent's 
Mouth. This gulf is a shallow lake, and forms a 
harbour of enormous size, where ships of every nation, 
almost, ride at anchor. 

We arrived at sunset, and the sky was a lovely rosy 
pink. The purple mountains of the island ranges, 
nearly two thousand feet high, divided the vast 
expanse of the heavens from the crimson waters of 
the harbour, lazily lapping the quay-sides of Port of 
Spain. Trinidad, discovered also by Columbus, is 
very hot and very prosperous. It belonged to the 
Spaniards till 1797, since which time it has belonged 
to us. Cocoa plantations flourish, and the Lake of 
Pitch is — and, I presume, will be for years to come — a 



TRINIDAD 81 

magnificent source of never-failing wealth. From it 
large quantities of asphaltum are taken and exported. 

Charles Kingsley raves over this home of tropical 
verdure, but I am not a naturalist, nor do I stay at 
Government Houses. 

I found Trinidad the most trying place of any in 
the West Indies. The mosquitoes are positively 
unbearable ; no part of your person is sacred from 
their nomadic and predatory excursions. Kickshaws, 
in the way of lace-trimmed parasols, will not suffice 
you for the sun, however festive the occasion may be 
to call forth dainty sunshades. Be advised in time : 
fling appearances to the four winds of heaven, sally 
forth in the largest of shady hats, carry the largest 
umbrella you can find, but go not into the streets 
shopping, or otherwise, without a waterproof, for the 
rains are characterised by a ferocity in their down- 
pouring unknown in other climes. Take also a fan to 
withstand the heat, which is ever present, and a never- 
ceasing hindrance to personal enjoyment. 

Everybody drives the smallest distances, but there 
are times when, encumbered with these three indis- 
pensable articles in overpowering heat (you may 
perhaps have to traverse a hundred yards, as from the 
landing-quay to the Royal Mail Company's Offices) 
when life is not worth living, unless you are a person 
of exceptionable amiability. 

Most of the visitors to Port of Spain contented 
themselves with lolling round on " rockers " on the 
verandah of the largest hotel, called Queen's Park 
Hotel, where the rooms are airy and spacious, but the 



i 



82 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

food is not always to be trusted. It looks out on to 
the savannah, a circular, fairly level tract of grass, 
round which an electric tram whirls the inhabitants 
of an evening for a breath of fresh air. 

What really interested me was the beautiful 
Botanical Garden, containing a library and fine 
herbarium. Here, indeed, the wonderful parasitical 
growth on leviathan trees is simply astounding. If 
you wish to obtain orchids and other rare botanical 
plants apply to the Superintendent. I went twice 
with friends to these gardens ; each time I was quite 
fascinated in watching the "parasol" ants hurrying 
to and fro in countless well-worn tracks, sometimes 
crossing our path, sometimes alongside of us carrying 
pieces of green leaf, frequently as large as a shilling. 
It was quite a green procession; they each kept to 
their appointed side of the path, those who had de- 
posited their green burdens returning on the other side 
in search of fresh "parasols." Policemen regulating 
traffic in our London streets could not have done the 
thing in better style. If the hot, moist heat made us 
resemble the sluggard, we had not far to go to learn 
industry from these skurrying little insects, w T hose 
ways are past finding out. We were cautioned not to 
try to pursue their tracks, which wind incredibly 
long distances among the undergrowth on either 
side of the paths, scorpions being not infrequently 
met with. 

On the voyage to Trinidad I met some Cambridge 
acquaintances, people who had been on the Para 
throughout the voyage from England. They had 



COLUMBIAN SOLDIERS 83 

landed both at Cartagena and at Colon, on the 
coast of Central America, and gave graphic accounts 
of the horrors of the civil war which has raged 
in Columbia these three years past. They were at 
Colon before peace was concluded, and it was pitiable 
to hear of the condition of the soldiers, mostly boys 
of enfeebled physique and stunted growth, scarcely 
strong enough to carry the old-fashioned guns given 
them. All looked starved, with an expression of utter 
despair imprinted on their woebegone countenances. 
A lady told me she collected bread from the ships and 
handed it to them on the quay. The wretched youths 
fought over it as dogs for a bone ; but a frozen sheep 
was given to them from one of the vessels lying along- 
side, which they tore into pieces amongst themselves, 
eating it raw. 

Their women followed them to war ; without their 
inciting them to fight, I am told, the Columbians 
would scarcely attempt to defend themselves. But 
when once roused, they fight like diminutive devils ! 
The women too, on one occasion, rushed a bridge, and 
took it during the last war. The most horrible 
thing I heard about them was that they had no 
ambulance, and no doctors ! 

Whilst I was in the Caribbean Sea, Hayti was in a 
disturbed state, Cuba in a transitional condition, erupt- 
ing volcanoes destroying whole cities, as at Martinique 
and in Guatemala. The Columbian Eepublic was resting 
out of sheer exhaustion from further civil warfare, whilst 
her neighbour Venezuela was in the throes of political 
revolution, figuratively torn in pieces by her rival 



84 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

presidents and her offended European debtors. 
Possibly times in the West Indies are bad for those 
who have put their trust in sugar, but life and 
property are safe under British rule. No one need 
starve unless he be irredeemably idle. If big fortunes 
are no longer attainable, still there is no need for 
the " mumpish melancholy," so well described by the 
Hon. S. Ollivier, Acting-Governor of Jamaica. He 
says < " I have observed that, as a people, we have a 
habit of being rather sorry for ourselves. We have 
not the cheerfulness of the Barbadian. On the other 
hand, our depression makes us mumpish and melancholy 
rather than vicious and violent. We overdo our talk 
of depression, we overdo our talk of the extravagancies 
of the Government, of the superfluity of our public 
officials. Our visitors take for public gospel what we 
promulgate for private consumption." 

To return to my journey to Trinidad on the Para. 
About thirty-five persons belonging to an English 
Opera Company were journeying to Trinidad. They 
had previously been playing in Kingston, and had 
been not only to all our colonies, but recently had 
been touring up the western coast of South America. 
I gathered they had had splendid houses in most 
of the large towns, such as Valparaiso, Santiago, and 
Lima, though the artistes with whom I conversed 
declared that the heat and the indifferent food they 
had had put before them, though taken to the best 
hotels, had been most trying to their health. The 
poor things looked terribly worn, and evidently made 
the most of the rest of the three days' sea- voyage 



STEOLLING PLAYEES 85 

before performing again at Port of Spain. They had 
about thirty plays in their repertoire, which included 
all the best known pieces and the most popular, such 
as The Geisha, The Shop Girl, etc. I met them on 
the return journey a fortnight later, returning via 
Kingston en route for Bermuda, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 
and St John's, Newfoundland. I mention having met 
these strolling players, because I think that many of 
one's friends in the British Isles would have no notion 
that the inhabitants of such distant countries had an 
opportunity of ever becoming acquainted with the 
well-known airs of Sullivan and other popular com- 
posers. Without belittling or depreciating our well- 
meaning but somewhat ignorant dwellers at home, 
it is well for us to wake up from insular habits of 
thinking, and to discover that outside our particular 
zone of influence civilised life is throbbing. In every 
sphere of labour men are searching for better methods, 
and, as in America, are not satisfied until they get 
them. We need to keep our eyes open if we would 
not lose our place in the world's history ! Conservatism 
such as ours does not reign in regions where dollars 
are plentiful, and where men are not fettered by the 
traditions of the past. 

It was late on Friday night, 5th December, when 
we were trans-shipped into the inter-colonial boat, 
thejff . 

I have previously stated that Barbadoes has hitherto 
been the meeting-place of the outcoming steamer and 
of the three smaller ships, whose mission it is to 
distribute the mails on three distinct routes. 



86 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

The E was bound for the islands as far as St 

Thomas, the Solent for La Guayra on the Venezuelan 
Coast, whilst the third steamer was setting off for 
Grenada and Tobago. 



CHAPTEE X 

THE CUISINE ON THE E . — THE ROMAN CATHOLIC 

BISHOP OF DOMINICA 

I do not intend to relate my experiences day by day 
from the time that I joined the Eoyal Mail Company's 

steamship E /but it behoves me to explain once more 

to those who would like to take this trip, that unless 
they can possess their souls in patience, and are in 
the best of health, they may find more discomfort 
than gain, more pain than profit in this so-called 
pleasure trip. Of course I may have had the ill-luck 
to strike a ship (please excuse the Yankeeism, but 
at Mandeville where I am writing, we are being 
invaded by Americans, whose object in life seems to 
me to be the erection of twenty-three storied sky- 
scrapers) where the captain, the purser, and the steward 
were suffering from a temporary loss of the sense of 
taste, either individually or collectively. The cook was 
a black, and from the culinary incapacity of the sons 
of Ham may I, in the future, mercifully be delivered ! 
Of all the inappetising-looking viands, of all the 
nauseous compounds, the component parts of which 
you could not even guess at, ever set before defenceless 

87 



88 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

travellers, favoured specially with tourists' privileges, 
those we had would take the cake. The first few 
days the food was incredibly bad, the meat uneatable, 
sometimes putrid, the bread mouldy, the butter rancid, 
the bananas rotten, and the oranges unripe ! This was 
whilst we were in port. Things improved somewhat 
when we were once away from Trinidad. We certainly 
had better fruit and delicious pines from Antigua, 
but the food was often sent away untouched, for 
the cooking was of the very vilest description possible. 
This, though bad enough, was not the only discomfort 
endured in that ever-memorable voyage. 

Of course the heat and the mosquitoes were inevitable. 
Fortunately the cleanliness of one's cabin was a feature 
to be noted ; also the advantage of having it to oneself 
was a thing to be thankful for; but the memory of 
the hot, weary, sleepless nights I endured from the 
noise and rattling winches at work, hoisting up and 
taking on cargo, which went on at all the ports we 
touched on our way going up to St Thomas, haunts 
me yet. Other ships of a less obsolete type are 
providentially provided with hydraulic cranes to do 
this work, but I have yet to learn that this particular 
Company favours any but old-fashioned methods of 
working. This frightful noise went on over my 
head ; outside my cabin door the niggers in the hold 
bawled to those working the hoisting or lowering 
apparatus, as the case might be, whilst the officers 
shouted down orders to them. There were three con- 
secutive nights with more or less of this hideous din 
going on, when exhausted nature was demanding sleep. 



DISCOMFORTS ON THE S.S. E 89 

Anything more purgatorial could scarcely be conceived. 
I was ill for a week from these privileges. When we 
did have a night free from this pandemonium, the ship 
was being driven through the water at such a rate we 
were not allowed to have our port-holes open for fear 
of being semi-swamped — and this in the tropics ! The 
stewardess was an enormously fat coloured woman of 
Barbadoes, much given to religion. She was a happy, 
good-natured body, but incapable of work. It was 
not pleasant to find yourself in a marble bath which 
apparently was never scrubbed out from one end of 
the year to the other. 

A married couple, who had travelled to Jamaica on 
the Port Antonio and were also taking this trip, com- 
plained with just cause of the fare given us. In 
these islands fruit, at least, is cheap. On the evening 
of the 8th of December our dessert consisted of rotten 
oranges, ditto bananas, and nuts ! I think the menu 
for breakfast on the 16 th of December will remain 
a standing joke whenever we meet. The tempting 
dishes offered us were salt-fish, pork chops, and brains ! 
I forget how the latter were served. After a sleepless 
night and in tropical heat, I need scarcely say that 
I did not partake of any. We went empty away 
mostly ! 

A lady passenger had also an experience which 
shows how very absurdly the regulations on these 
ships are adapted for tourists, or indeed for anybody 
wanting to see something of the islands we passed. 

She was on deck at 7.30 a.m. one morning, when 
one of the ship's officers approached her, and informed 



90 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

her it was one of the rules that ladies should not 
appear on deck till breakfast-time. The lady is a 
daughter of a well-known judge, and her answer was 
given on judicial lines, to the effect that no mention 
of such regulation was on her passage ticket, and 
since she came to see the scenery, she intended every 
morning when there was land in sight to come up 
as early as she chose. She said later on to me: 
" Fancy passing La Soufriere, or any other equally 
interesting place for which you were enduring stifling 
heat, mosquitoes, sleepless nights, and bad food, and 
not allowed to be on deck to see it!" 

This was the only mention made of their famous 
regulation ; we never enquired whether it was a printed 
one, or an unwritten tradition of the Company. 

From the accounts I have since heard from 
people coming out to the West Indies by the Eoyal 
Mail Company's tickets, advertised in the daily papers 
at £65 for sixty-five days, I am sure it is not generally 
understood that in these inter-colonial mail-boats 
passengers, whether tourists or persons having tickets 
with "tourist privileges" inscribed on them, like 
myself and Mr and Mrs S , endure all the discom- 
forts of cargo-boats, and, in addition, suffer from the 
restrictions of a mail service bound by contract to 
deliver and collect mails at certain times at certain 
places. 

We never knew at what hour we should land at the 
different West Indian towns. It would have been 
an impossibility to order saddle horses, or carriages, 
to be in readiness for us had we desired them, 



A BEAUTIFUL CEUISE 91 

nor could we ever ascertain with any degree of 
reliability how long we should stay at any given 
place until we got there ; all was uncertain, indefinite. 
The mails, naturally, were the first consideration ; what 
cargo to discharge, or to ship, was the next ; and last 
of all, the convenience of the passengers. I give this 
as my own personal experience — I only hope other 
people have fared better ! If there was any place 
like Martinique, for instance, which we particularly 
wanted to see, we invariably arrived when it was 
dark. Fortunately, on the return journey one was 
in some cases able to see towns one had missed in 
this way. 

At the Eoyal Mail Company's office at Kingston, 
when I made my arrangements to travel by their 
ships, I was informed in flowing language what a 
beautiful cruise it was to the islands, and that I 
should never regret it ! It was beautiful, and if I 
shall never regret having made it, I certainly shall 
never forget it. I consider the journey from Trinidad 
up to St Thomas a bad one if business compels one 
to make it; as a tourist trip, and therefore a 
pleasure trip, it is quite unworthy of the name, 
especially in these days when the latter are so 
skilfully and so ably arranged and conducted by 
people who really consider their clienUle. Having 
had the experience, I have not failed to warn people, 
especially those who are not strong, of its discomfort 
and disadvantages ! 

The best way for those who have time and leisure 
to see the northern group of islands is to stay at 



92 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

Dominica, where there are frequently very fair oppor- 
tunities of visiting the contiguous islands. It is a 
lovely, mountainous, and picturesque island. There 
are, I was told by a gentleman who had stayed in 
them, very comfortable lodgings to be had, kept by 
an Englishwoman ; and this, he said, was better than 
putting up at the small hotel, where the food was 
not so reliable. I have also met people who have 
stayed for weeks in this island and have never found 
it dull For men there is shooting and fishing in 
the rivers. An introduction by a member of the club 
should be obtained, for there are golf links, and, as 
in all hot countries, plenty of tennis. 

The chief charm of life in Dominica consists in 
the exquisite rides amongst the mountains where there 
are sulphur springs, a boiling lake, and waterfalls 
to be visited. I have on a previous page alluded to 
the very promising condition of things in Dominica, 
and I have also mentioned that limes and cocoa are 
its principal exports. I had time to take a lovely 
walk in the valley of the Eoseau, just at the back 
of the town, and was much impressed by the loveliness 
of the scenery, as well as with the prosperous-looking 
plantations on either side of the road. At the end 
of the valley a turn in the road exposed the peak 
called Morne Diablotin to view; it is 4750 feet, and 
the mountains are the highest in the Lesser Antilles. 

On my return journey from St Thomas no less 
a person than the Eoman Catholic Bishop of Dominica, 
with two or three attendant priests, came on board 
at St Kitts. He was introduced to me, and told me 



BEOTHEE BONIFACE 93 

quite a number of interesting things about the 
islanders. Some few Caribs, he said, remained still. 
I asked if his Church had many adherents in Dominica. 
"Ninety per cent./ 5 he told me, adding that it had 
been a French possession longer than an English 
one. 

The Bishop, who is a Belgian and not long conse- 
crated, was a very chatty and amusing person ; I 
admired his skilful tactics. Naturally he was somewhat 
prejudiced in favour of our late enemies, the Boers; 
but politics and religion he very wisely eschewed. 
I was amused at his ways. If he wanted his deck 
chair removed from one side of the deck to the 
other he always called his servant, or secretary — I 
could not tell in what capacity the man stood — to 
do it for him. Brother Boniface was the oddest- 
looking creature I ever saw. He was short, fair, and 
very much freckled, scant locks of sandy hair peeped 
out from under a very broad-brimmed black felt hat. 
His habit was black, and came to his boot tops, being 
confined round the middle of his shapeless body with 
a black shining belt. Between its irregular folds and 
the top of his boots, white stockings, which probably 
were knitted by a Belgian grandmother many years 
gone by, showed at intervals, their pristine whiteness 
being somewhat the worse for wear. A very large 
black stuff umbrella completed Brother Boniface's 
toilet. He was continually smiling, and his very large 
mouth looked always ready for a good meal. As 
we approached Dominica the mountains were veiled 
in mists, and everything had to give way for the 



94 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

drenching torrential rain which poured on to the deck. 
I was standing close by the Bishop, and admired the 
artistic effects of the mist-wreathed mountainous coast. 

" I prefer to have them so," I said, pointing to the 
mountains. "There are some things which are best 
left undefined, indefinite, mysterious. Don't you think 
so, Monseigneur ? " I looked round at him. 

He looked meaningly at me — I fancy he knew I was 
secretly thinking of the very definite statements of 
the Eomish Church — and then said : " Do as you 
suggested the other day. Come and spend a month 
on the island." 

"I should very much like to do so," I answered 
simply. 

"Our people are very good — you don't think they 
can be ? " he asked, in a quick way which seems 
natural to him. 

" Oh yes, I do," was my reply ; " I don't see how they 
can fail to be so with such a good bishop." And there 
our conversation and short acquaintance ended. 



CHAPTEE XI 

DR GRAY ON YELLOW FEVER — MONT PELEE — THE RED 
CARIBS OF DOMINICA 

Since my object in putting pen to paper is to recount 
my Jamaican experiences of the winter of 1902-3, it will 
not be fitting, and it might be monotonous, to describe 
each island as we came to it. Suffice it to say that as 
Trinidad is the best off of the British possessions in the 
Caribbean Sea, so Antigua is the poorest ; it has even 
been necessary to cut down the official salaries. The 
failure of sugar is the reason of its poverty. The 
Governor of the Leeward Islands resides at Antigua. 
We stood 4 miles out from St John's, the chief town 
of that island, where heavy seas made the landing most 
difficult. There was a good deal of cargo to be left at 
this place, and as we came up the companion after 
dinner that evening, it was quite a sight to see the tall 
masts and sails of the lighters alongside, rolling in the 
dim light, as well as to see huge cases roped together 
poised in the air, waiting for the right moment when 
the lighter rose on a high wave to drop as gently as 
circumstances permitted. On the other side passengers 
were also waiting for the right moment to land from 

95 



96 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

the steam-tug. Some amusing " deckers " joined the 
ship at this port ; these answer to our steerage 
passengers. I saw a newly-married couple of blacks 
come on board, both as well dressed as white people of 
a corresponding class at home. The woman in white 
pique, starched as they only can starch in the West 
Indies, wearing a much-beflowered white hat, and hold- 
ing an enormous bunch of flowers. Her newly-made 
husband wore an immaculate suit of grey, and carried 
the luggage, consisting of one chair and two basins ! 

Deckers have no quarters below stairs. They re- 
main all night under an awning, but as their journeys 
are generally from port to port, their lot is not a 
hard one. We had brought along with us a pale- 
faced Irish curate, who was met by the Bishop of 
Antigua. 

From St Kitts a delicate-looking girl came on board, 
the daughter of a sugar-planter, whose family had 
been settled some generations there. She amused 
me by her readiness to drink cocktails at all hours 
of the day; in fact, she gave me to understand that 
it was quite customary with many West Indian ladies 
to drink one before dinner as an appetiser. It is 
quite true that the enervating climate is most ex- 
hausting. Personally, I should be sorry to have to 
coax a jaded appetite in this way. 

We had an interesting personage with us at one 

time on the E , a tall, dark-browed, silent, 

narrow-chested Spaniard, who smoked cigarettes all 
day. He was suffering from bervi-berri, and people 
said he was the ex-president of a small republic 



AN UNKNOWN REPUBLIC 97 

called Acre, which has quite recently been a source 
of contention between the governments of Brazil and 
Bolivia. It owes its existence to Sir Martin Conway, 
of exploring fame, who discovered its resources, and 
pointed them out to some enterprising Americans. 
This tiny republic is far up on the banks of the 
Amazon. Report said that before leaving the scene 
of his presidency he had feathered his nest, his gains 
being safely invested in European securities, but so 
much mystery lies around the rise and fall of South 
American presidents, that one may unconsciously 
fall into error in giving too much credence to reports 
which spread too easily when they concern noteworthy 
individuals. 

One other personage, whose scientific knowledge 
interested me greatly, was a Colonial assistant-surgeon 
from Castries, the chief town of St Lucia. He was 
returning to England, having just been offered a 
more advanced appointment in our West African 
possessions. He gave me a paper to read, which he 
had drawn up on the conveyance of disease by mos- 
quitoes, in which he declared : " It is no longer a 
theory, but an established fact, that Malaria and 
Yellow Fever are conveyed from the sick to the 
healthy by mosquitoes." He further explained many 
interesting experiments which have been made with 
"infected mosquitoes," which, he stated, "ought to 
convince the most sceptical that yellow fever (and 
other diseases) is carried by mosquitoes." The result 
of the establishment of this theory resolves itself 
into " the destruction of the mosquitoes which carry 

G 



98 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

them (parasites), and of their breeding-places." These 
latter he describes to be such places as stagnant 
swamps and offensive puddles and pools. It is in- 
teresting also to know that the Military Governor 
of Havana, General Leonard Wood, issued instruc- 
tions for the method of disinfection for yellow fever 
based on this theory, and the effect of this change is, 
that this particular disease has been stamped out of 
Havana in less than ten months, and the city which 
has been the home of yellow fever since 1762 can 
now rank as a healthy city of the world. " Finally," 
he wrote, "the complete control over the spread of 
yellow fever that the Sanitary Department of Havana 
has obtained this year, by the enforcement of prophy- 
lactic measures that are based solely on the doctrine of 
the transmission of yellow fever by the mosquito, goes 
very far to prove that there is no other channel of 
communication of the disease. These results have 
been obtained by the systematic destruction of mos- 
quitoes in every house where a case presented itself. 
If this success is interrupted, the responsibility must 
fall upon the physician who conceals a case of the 
disease." Evidently the splendid results of the Cuban 
campaign against mosquitoes has exceeded the expecta- 
tions of the most sanguine, and one may hope in a few 
years this disease, which is the scourge of the Brazils 
and many tropical countries, will be relegated to the 
history of the past. 

When I contemplated taking the trip to the islands 
it was naturally my hope to see Mont Pelee in action, 
nor was I entirely disappointed. On the route up to St 



MONT PELEE 99 

Thomas the mountain was partially enveloped in the 
densest clouds of smoke, but returning, we went as near 
the shore as was prudent. The mountain then was 
covered in impenetrable clouds of smoke. It was a 
moonlight night and the effect was grand, but weird in 
the extreme ; lightning at intervals was illuminating the 
sky to the north, but no rain fell. Presently, as we 
approached nearer, we smelt sulphur and felt dust in 
our faces, together with warm currents of air. We 
kept our eyes fixed on the crater, or, to speak more 
correctly, at the spot where we supposed it to be. Nor 
were we disappointed, for we saw a stream of " living 
fire " leap from under the thick concealing smoke and 
race down the mountain-side in a serpentine track. We 
did not see it plunge into the sea, but the officer on 
the bridge got a sight of it. He told us afterwards that 
it had taken exactly ten minutes for this fiery torrent 
to travel five miles, which was the distance the sea 
lay from the old crater. The whole aspect was terrify- 
ing. One felt one did not care for a nearer acquaint- 
ance with a burning mountain. 

We did not land at St Pierre to see the ruins ; for 
that you require a French permission. We saw where 
they lay, and a tiny light glimmered close down towards 
the water's-edge, which probably belonged to the craft 
which the professor at the Observatory has ready for 
escape at the first symptom of danger. St Pierre must 
have been one of the most important towns in the West 
Indies. It was the most famous town of Martinique, 
and contained 25,000 persons. It used to be the port 
of call of the Eoyal Mail ; the steamers go now to Port 



100 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

of France, between which and St Pierre a beautiful 
road, bordered with woods, formed the favourite drive 
taken by visitors to the island. On either side are 
seen "giant ferns and huge parasites clinging to the 
branches of gigantic trees, the whole woven together 
by creepers of extraordinary grace. Suddenly the 
view opens out, and splendid points of vantage are 
reached whence one commands the eastern and western 
sides of the island ; for this road, traced (whence its 
name Trace) for the most part by the Caribs almost 
always follows the ridge of the mountains." 

In disembarking at St Pierre one w T as faced by the 
Place Bertin ; on one side stood a round tower serving 
as a semaphore, having a red light visible for 9 miles, 
opposite stood the Chamber of Commerce. The town 
possessed two banks, a seminary, a theatre, a military 
hospital, rum factories and a beautiful Botanical 
Garden with quantities of native and exotic plants, 
waterfalls, and a miniature lake with three islets called 
respectively, Martinique, Dominica, and Guadeloupe, 
because their shapes were similar to these islands. 
Life was luxurious at this French colonial town ; every 
house had its bath-room, there was an excellent 
hydropathic institution, food was abundant and cheap. 
Whether or no there was any truth in the report that 
this city was famed for its wickedness, I am not able 
to say. St Pierre, I know, was considered by many to 
be a modern Gomorrah, and piously-disposed people 
regarded its extinction as the righteous judgment of 
an indignant Deity. I will only refer my readers on 
this head to a story of what went on at St Pierre, 



ST PIERRE 101 

Good Friday afternoon last (1902), as given in an 
article in The Fortnightly of October 1902, entitled 
"A few Facts concerning France." It appears that 
atheistical agitators went to the island preaching an 
anti-religious crusade, the outcome of which was on 
that Good Friday afternoon a procession paraded the 
streets of St Pierre, hooting and blaspheming. In the 
midst of this gathering of human scum was held aloft, 
on a cross, a pig, crucified alive. Its head was adorned 
with wreaths of flowers, and the crowd mockingly aped 
its dying wriggles. To put a climax to their folly, in 
a mad rush of hatred towards all things sacred they 
marched up the slopes of Mont Pelee to a spot 
where a Calvary stood, and was seen far and wide in 
the island landscape. This they tore down, flinging the 
crucifix into the crater, with shouts of " Go to hell, 
from whence thou earnest ! " I met a very charming 
French priest, who had, by his own exertions, built a 
church in one of the parishes of Dominica ; I believe 
it w r as called Soufriere. I asked him concerning the 
truth of this story. He had heard of it, but — and 
he lifted up his hands in holy horror at the very 
mention of the wickedness of St Pierre— he was not 
able to confirm it, though he considered it more than 
likely to be true. In Mr George Kennan's book, which 
describes the tragedy of Pelee, an interesting incident 
is recorded. On the eve of the catastrophe a local 
newspaper called Les Colonies deprecated the panic 
which had been caused by previous heavy detonating 
explosions and the appearance of incandescent matter 
at the summit-fissure, in consequence of which many 



102 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

persons left for different parts of the island. " Mont 
Pel^e is no more to be feared by St Pierre than 
Vesuvius is feared by Naples," said this newspaper. 
Captain Leboffe, the skipper of the Italian barque, 
Orsolina, which was in the harbour loading with sugar 
for Havre, thought differently. He went to the 
shippers, told them he did not consider the roadstead 
safe, and gave notice that he should sail for Havre 
immediately. 

" But," said they, " you can't go yet ; you have not 
got aboard half the cargo." 

The captain, however, declared he should sail rather 
than risk remaining there. The shippers angrily ex- 
plained that the mountain was not dangerous, since it 
had once before thrown out ashes , and smoke in the 
same way. 

"If Vesuvius looked as your volcano does this 
morning, I'd get out of Naples, and I am going to 
get out of here," said he. The shippers told him if 
he sailed without permission and without clearance 
papers he would be arrested on reaching Havre. 

" All right," imperturbably he replied ; " I'll take my 
chance of arrest, but I won't take any chances on that 
volcano. I'm going to get my anchor up, and make 
sail just as soon as I get aboard." And he went away. 

The shippers sent two Customs officers to the 
barque, with instructions to prevent her leaving. 
The captain, however, addressed them as follows: 
"Gentlemen, I sail from this port in less than an 
hour. If you want to go ashore, now is your time to 
leave. If you stay, I shall take you to France." 



ISLAND OF SABA 103 

When the sails were loosed, and the crew began to 
heave up anchor, the Customs officers hailed a passing 
boat and went ashore, threatening the captain with all 
the penalties of the law. 

Twenty-four hours later St Pierre, with all its 
inhabitants, was wiped for ever out of the book of the 
living, but the barque Orsolina was speeding on her 
way to sunny France. 

La Soufriere at St Vincent was awful in the 
desolation which the late eruption has produced ; the 
line of demarcation was strictly defined between the 
green verdure of the country which had not suffered 
from devastating showers of dust and lava, and that 
which had been subjected to the outpourings from 
the crater. Puffs of white smoke here and there 
announced the neighbourhood of hot sulphur springs. 

The inhabitants of Montserrat also lie under the 
shadow of a volcanic mountain ; just above their little 
town is a crater which, like Pelee, may one day serve 
as a vent to the fires beneath. Temporary shelter at 
one corner of the island has been prepared for an 
emergency of this kind. Meanwhile, the islanders 
busy themselves very philosophically with the cultiva- 
tion of limes, an industry which seems to be fairly 
remunerative. The speech of the people here is still 
said to recall the brogue of the Irishmen sent out by 
Oliver Cromwell. 

I think one of the most interesting of the smaller 
islands we saw, but did not touch at, was the little 
Dutch island of Saba. Here a few hundred thrifty 
Hollanders inhabit an extinct crater several hundreds 



104 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

of feet above the waters of the Caribbean Sea; they 
reach their homes by means of ladders hanging from 
the cliffs. Curious to relate, in their isolated eyrie 
they build many of the schooners which ply locally 
from island to island. The ships are let down by 
ropes, and navigated by these extraordinary islanders, 
who are considered the ablest sailors in those waters. 

It was interesting to find ourselves once more at 
Trinidad, for events on the Venezuelan coast had 
progressed since we had been away. We found our- 
selves riding at anchor within a few hundred yards 
of the flagship of our West Indian Squadron ; other 
British warships were beside her, and not far away 
the captured fleet of Venezuela. The crews and men 
had been sent home. Of course Germany was repre- 
sented, but America was there in full force to support 
the Munro policy, in the menacing form of four great 
warships, which lay motionless on the green waters of 
the Gulf of Paria. The blockade of the Orinoco had 
begun, and we met fugitives from the mainland at 
the hotel on shore, who seemed to have passed through 
lively times. I spent Christmas Day on the good ship 
Trent, belonging to the Eoyal Mail Service, where 
we were splendidly entertained, and the next morning 
at an early hour I found myself once more in 
Kingston. 

I feel, however, I cannot bring my account, brief 
though it is, of what proved to be a very interesting 
trip, to a close, without some mention of that almost 
extinct race, the Caribs. 

In a Jamaican newspaper an interesting report 



THE CABIB TYPE 105 

appears, written by Mr Hesketh Bell, who probably 
is the best authority living on the subject of the 
aborigines of the West Indies. He says : " The reserve 
set apart for the St Vincent Caribs was recently raked 
by the fire from the Soufriere. But these are Black 
Caribs, who, through long admixture of negro blood, 
have lost all the distinguishing traits of the aboriginal 
tribe. There still exists, however, in Dominica a hand- 
ful of full-blooded Eed Caribs, the last survivors of 
their race." Mr Bell, who is the Administrator of the 
last-named island, then alludes to the pre-Columbian 
tradition when fleets of canoes overran the Windward 
and Leeward Islands exterminating the males, but 
preserving the women of the milder Arawak nation. 
The latter handed down for many generations from 
mother to daughter their original tongue. He further 
says : " Whatever its origin, the Carib type, even in 
the remnant that survive to-day, shows an unmistak- 
ably Mongolian character, and it would be hard to dis- 
tinguish a Carib from a Chinese or Tartar child." The 
Caribs were inveterate cannibals. Defoe, it is believed, 
placed the scene of his romance in Tobago, and the 
wild man Friday was presumably one of a hapless lot 
of Arawaks whom a party had captured, and were 
probably carrying north for the delectation of the 
tribe. 

The Caribs, says Davis, after having tasted the flesh 
of all nations, pronounced the French the most delicate, 
and the Spaniards the hardest of digestion. Laborde 
interviewed a Carib who " beguiled the tedium of his 
journey by gnawing the remains of a boiled human 



106 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

foot " ; he told the priest that he only ate Arawaks, 
" Christians gave him stomachache." 

The Administrator goes on to describe how years of 
peace and protection have completely metamorphosed 
the Carib, and have arrested almost at the last gasp 
the extinction of this interesting remnant of one of 
the world's aboriginal races. Instead of a bloodthirsty, 
man-eating savage the Carib is now as law-abiding 
and mild a subject as any the King has. "He no 
longer paints crimson circles of roucou round his eyes 
and stripes of black and white over his body, but on 
high days and holidays he wears a tall hat and a 
black coat ; instead of yelling round a sacrificial stone, 
the Carib of to-day goes to confession to the parish 
priest, and tells his beads with edifying fervour." 
The Carib Eeserve at Dominica numbers nearly 400 
members, probably 120 only are full-blooded. Out of 
78 school-children, 26 are described by Mr Bell to have 
pure blood in them ; their chief characteristics are 
bright, intelligent expressions, oblique eyes, straight 
hair, rather coarse, of a beautiful blue-black, the 
complexion varying from brown to a pinkish-yellow. 
Their chief claims to be of pure blood. He settles 
petty disputes. Ogiste, his little granddaughter, is 
evidently the last of his dynasty. She is more negro 
than Carib, according to the Administrator, and the 
Salic law prevails in the Carib Eeserve. 



CHAPTEE XII 

DRIVES AND COUNTRY LIFE AT MANDEYILLE — NEGROES 
AND FUNERAL CUSTOMS 

It was on Boxing Day 1902, that I returned to 
Jamaica, the Trent arriving at Kingston at 7 a.m. 
enabled me to catch the morning train for Mandeville. 

I breakfasted with friends at Myrtle Bank Hotel, 
was delighted to find a number of letters awaiting me 
at the post-office. I then betook myself at ten o'clock 
that morning to the railway station. These are, 
naturally, somewhat primitive ; the trains, too, are not 
noted for their punctuality, they are known to break 
down occasionally, which is rather trying to the 
temper. I speak from sad experience. Still one 
remembers, if things are not up to elate, that one is 
not in the most flourishing of the British Colonies. 

In view of the late depression of trade, it strikes 
me, as it does nearly everybody I have met who 
considers the subject at all, that a large proportion 
of the island revenue goes to support a very expensive 
gubernatorial machinery which constitutes the govern- 
ment of this country. 

When sugar was £70 instead of £5 a ton, when 
100 lbs. of coffee fetched 80s. instead of 20s., when the 

107 



108 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

wealth of the West Indian planter was proverbial, 
the salaries of the officials were not disproportionate. 
The prosperity of those days will never probably 
revisit this island, but the salaries are likely to remain 
at their present high figure. One hears much ani- 
madversion and grumbling on this subject from the 
better-class inhabitants of Jamaica. The Colonial 
Secretary, say they, might well have another thousand 
per annum in addition to his present stipend, if that 
would ensure so efficient and capable a man for that 
post as the present occupant ; but it is apparent to 
many that £5000 a year, with a fine house to live in, 
wines and spirits free of duty, does not guarantee 
to the island either acceptable or fitting representatives 
of royalty. 

. At the same time, the stability and justice of the 
present government is fully appreciated by the in- 
habitants as well as by those Americans who have large 
financial interests, such as the Fruit Companies in 
Jamaica. Justice is administered to the black very 
differently by the present legislature than formerly. 
In the country districts the overseers who had to 
send to the absentee landlords annual sums from their 
estates invariably mulcted the negro of his pay to make 
up the deficit. 

The information which Whittaker's Almanac 
supplies, under the head of Jamaica, will give to the 
reader an idea of how large and how expensive is the 
staff of officials who are employed in the government. 
The Government Handbook of Jamaica will give 
details as to the expenditure of the yearly revenue. 



BANANA TEADE 109 

In 1900-1901 this amounted to £760,387. The 
expenditure of the same year was £763,902. I have 
heard it said that if you cut down the official incomes 
you won't get the right men. and that the Jamaicans 
would not like to be considered, or to rate themselves, 
a third-rate colony. If that be so, all one can say is, 
that they must pay for their pride. A government 
official, who worked hard for something under £400 
a year, told me he thought that Englishmen would 
not live year after year in such an enervating climate 
unless the pay was good. He had been six years 
out here ; his work was hard and unremitting, and he 
had not even left the island for a holiday in all 
that time. When he came to Jamaica he was an 
athlete, now he could scarcely run a quarter of a 
mile. Thus there are two sides to every question ! 

Soon after leaving Kingston we passed through 
swamps covered with mangroves, then through a 
thousand acres of level land quite recently irrigated and 
brought into cultivation. The climate here is hot, and 
specially suited to the growth of bananas. Since the 
days of sugar failure this has been a remunerative 
industry. Eleven years ago, about thirty bunches of 
bananas were imported into England. In 1901, 
3,000,000 came from the Canaries and 450,000 from 
Jamaica. The revenue of the island for the first five 
months of the financial year 1902, exceeded by 
£40,000 the receipts for the same period in the year 
previous, and, owing to the extension of the fruit 
trade, the financial outlook is more hopeful than it 
has been for years. Canada, so the local papers say, 



110 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

is looking forward to consignments of Jamaican 
bananas. 

The fact of Elder, Dempster & Co. having 
combined with the United Fruit Company means 
a continual market open to the banana trade, both 
in Britain and in the United States. The latter is 
an American enterprise, having steamers running 
between the West Indies, Boston, New York, 
Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Sir Alfred Jones, who 
is the moving spirit of the Direct Line, is most 
generous in his dealings with this poverty-stricken 
island. He announced, some months ago, that the 
Line he represents (Elder, Dempster) would take, 
free of freight from Bristol, English stallions, bulls, and 
rams, for breeding purposes, the object being to improve 
the breeds of cattle, there being splendid grazing land 
in some parts of the island. 

At a dinner given by the West Indian Club in 
London, 1st October 1902, Sir Alfred Jones, in referring 
to the position of the West Indies, said he thought 
there "had been too much complaining, the people 
should do what they could themselves to develop 
the island. There were many possibilities before them. 
The tourist traffic might be developed, and there were 
splendid opportunities for breeding horses and cattle. 
Mineral also afforded a possible field for expansion. 
The great thing for West Indians was not to sit down 
and think they had a grievance, but to get up and put 
their shoulders to the wheel." He also referred to the 
prosperous olden time when activity reigned in the 
cotton industry, and trusted to see a revival of it some 



PEEFEKENTIAL TAEIFFS 111 

day. He believed in the future of the island, deploring 
the ignorance still reigning in England regarding the 
West Indies. 

One is somewhat amused here at the newspaper 
revelations. Great confidence in Mr Chamberlain is 
felt over the difficulties connected with the Sugar 
Convention, etc. One paragraph states that a good 
deal of literature is being circulated just now con- 
cerning the injustice of depriving the working man 
at home of his cheap sugar. " The best answer/' says 
the paper to this, " is that the Trades Unions are dead 
against bounties, and ask that bounty-fed sugar should 
be denied access to this country altogether/' 

Eumours of discontent are also to be heard in this 
land to the effect that the chief trade goes to America 
and not to Britain. Local economists talk of the mother- 
country giving preferential tariffs to her colonies and 
dependencies, having learnt their lesson from no less a 
person than Mr Secldon, of New Zealand fame. They 
should have heard Judge Shaw's paper, read last 
September in the Section of Economics, at the British 
Association, Belfast, in which he strove to show how 
the law of commercial development meant the natural 
and inevitable selection of the nearest market, what- 
ever code of tariffs prevailed, and instanced Canada's 
trade with the United States as an example of this. 
If the mother-country were to give to her colonies 
preferential trading facilities, it would disorganise all 
existing fiscal agreements with every Continental power, 
he said, and the price she would pay would be 
financial and commercial suicide. Since we are a 



112 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

nation of shopkeepers and traders, our teeming 
millions of workers must be fed as cheaply as 
possible. 

After passing through the level lands of St 
Catherine's parish, the line gradually ascends, until 
at Williams field, the station for Mandeville, it is 
1000 feet above sea-level. The scenery becomes 
broken and wild as you get among the hills ; dry 
river beds in the rainy season are roaring torrents. 
There are in the island upwards of 114 streams 
finding their way to the sea, besides numerous 
tributaries, some streams being navigable. When I 
glanced around at the different stations we stopped 
at, I never saw a white face. Porus is about 10 
miles from Mandeville, and a quaint, busy little town. 
J. A. Froude says no explanation is given in any 
handbook of this singular name, but he found that 
a Porus figured amongst the companions of Columbus I 
From this place the train crawled, squeaked, and 
groaned up to Williamsfield. 

A drive of 5 miles brought me to The Grove, 
Mandeville, a very comfortable private hotel, where 
I spent some happy weeks, and from whence I took 
pen in hand to relate my experiences. The drive 
from the station was lovely ; the ground here is red 
and the foliage very green, which makes the country 
most picturesque. It is one continual ascent through 
roads bordered and sheltered with waving bamboos, 
palms, orange-trees, cedars, and mangoes. Sometimes 
one caught sight of magnificent silk-cotton trees 
standing in lonely grandeur in the midst of a 



THE MANCHESTER, HILLS 113 

pasture. At last, turning a sharp corner, the horses 
clattered up a steep, stony hill, rushed me across 
what looked like a village green, my driver pulling 
them up with a jerk in front of Mrs England's 
verandah. Intending visitors to Mandeville cannot 
do better than trust themselves to the above lady's 
catering ; the food is excellent, the house most 
healthily situated, and everything is done with a 
view to the guest's comfort. Mrs England has not 
been long in the island, but she has managed to 
learn how to deal with the black domestics very 
successfully. 

This district of the Manchester Hills in w T hich 
Mandeville lies, is the heart of the orange industry ; 
unfortunately, the beautiful tangerine which abounds, 
as well as the other kinds, will not keep long enough 
for packing. These grow wild in the hills, and negro 
children sell them at the station, six for a qiiatty, 
i.e. l|d. I saw large wooden buildings at Williams- 
field owned by fruit shippers, where fruit bought 
locally is sorted as to size, wrapped in paper, and 
packed in barrels or boxes. Some enterprising person 
might well start a marmalade factory with the 
thousands of rejected ones thrown away. 

The climate of this little township is eminently 
cool and recuperative. In August, residents come 
from Kingston to escape the excessive heat. After 
Christmas, Americans visit the island to avoid the 
rigorous cold of New York and the northern states. 
As I write, there is no representative of the British 
flag but myself amongst the guests. 

H 



114 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

Across the green, or parade, as it is called, stands a 
fine County Court House. Opposite, at a distance of 
two hundred yards or so, the parish church is to be 
seen. Irregularly placed around this central patch of 
grass are several stores where most things are to be 
purchased, also a chemist's shop, and a room where a 
dentist and a lawyer seem to hold appointments with 
their clients on alternate days. The place boasts of an 
hotel and a club, but its chief attraction to me is its 
large market, which on Saturdays is quite interesting. 
I have visited it with Mrs England and her cook on 
two occasions, and am beginning to know the look of 
the numerous island vegetables before they are cooked. 
Small cultivators come many miles to this market, 
and the blacks strike one as being more prosperous 
and more respectful than those at Kingston. The 
women carrying their stock-in-trade in large baskets 
on their heads, with a fine hat generally perched on 
the top of that, step like " young panthers," and often 
walk 5 miles an hour, The men or boys bring the 
goods to sell in baskets on donkeys, and sleep in the 
market shelters. I have often seen pigs sitting quite 
comfortably in these baskets, and looking as if they 
enjoyed their ride. Besides vegetables, chickens and 
native tobacco, twined into rope at 3d. a yard, are 
sold here. Dark, mysterious-looking pats of sugar, 
made in the negro's pot, also find customers. I hear 
the blacks make a drink of the latter. There is a 
shed for those who sell meat, but the rest of them 
just squat on the pavement, chattering together like 
magpies. 



MOONLIGHT WALKS 115 

The majority of the parishioners are small growers, 
renting five, ten, or twenty acres at £1 an acre. 
Oranges nearly always pay the rent. Where science 
and method prevail in knowing how best to fertilise 
the trees, the grower gets a better crop and larger 
fruit ; he can pack his own oranges and get 50 per 
cent, more for them. 

Mandeville strikes one as thoroughly English ; there 
are lovely walks and drives in the neighbourhood. 
Several families have properties not far from the town ; 
in fact there seems quite a pleasant society for miles 
round. There is a tennis-club, to which people drive 
in their buggies. One of the ladies makes tea, and 
although these people have lost much of late years 
over the decline of the sugar trade, they are certainly 
hospitable, courteous, and refined. This is a charming 
spot to recruit in after the heat of the lowlands. One 
can walk in the moonlight for miles without the 
smallest fear of anything unpleasant. I have done 
so with Mrs England's daughters, and nothing is more 
enjoyable. One can see the foliage against the sky 
so much clearer, and the shapes of the different trees 
thus become impressed upon one's memory. 

After nine o'clock, except just in Mandeville itself, 
not a soul is to be seen in the lanes. I fancy the 
negro goes to roost betimes like the feathered tribe. 
Perhaps this is because of his hereditary and ingrained 
fear of the supernatural. He calls all ghostly visitants 
" duppies," and tells you he sees them sitting on the 
trees where your own visual organ fails to inform you 
of any living thing, or otherwise, 



116 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

One night three or four of us had emerged from 
deep shadow into bright moonlight : our dresses were 
white. Wheels were heard behind us, and immediately 
after, a one-horsed conveyance with two people sitting 
in it appeared. As it approached out of the gloom, 
the figure nearest us sat huddled up holding a huge 
umbrella close over its head. My companions 
recognised the chaise as belonging to an old black 
proprietor. We thought he had taken us for 
" duppies," and returned to the hotel much amused ; 
but we were informed that the umbrella was not 
to protect its owner from ghostly visitants, but to 
keep him from getting moon-struck. 

One day I took a drive to a property some miles 
from here, where the family owned a good old Norman 
name, well known in some parts of England. They 
had been settled in their estate for one hundred and 
fifty years, had seen both good times and bad. The 
house in which I sat was really a beautiful two-storied 
building with verandahs both downstairs and upstairs ; 
the drawing-room was of noble proportions, and Mrs 
G- — — told me that the wood employed in the con- 
struction had all been cleared from their own estate, 
and consisted principally of mahogany, bullet-wood, 
and cedar. They were several miles from a town or 
a market, and nearly everything that came to table was 
produced on the property. 

The negro shanties about here are not very large 
for the accommodation of the numerous members of 
a family. The Keswick delegate, Mr Meyer, drew 
attention to the narrow limits of these. It seems 



THE BLACKS' BURIAL-PLACE 117 

the blacks will not build additional buildings or better 
accommodation since they would be liable to in- 
creased taxation. Each little home is mostly provided 
with yams, a few banana-trees, and several orange- 
trees planted anywhere without any method. 

I have only so far summoned up courage to enter 
one of them belonging to a coloured woman who 
takes in washing. She informed me she had four 
children, "two young gentlemen and two young 
ladies." It is amusing to hear the negresses say to 
each other, " Yes, ma'am," and a negro in the wordiest 
altercation never fails to address his opponent as 
" Sah ! " The greatest contempt which a woman feels 
for another is expressed in the words, "You black 
niggah ! " They only call each other black niggahs 
when further words fail to express their disgust. A 
negro proverb says, " Choose wife Saturday on Sunday." 
This means if she works well on Saturday — and that 
is the great market day here — she can be asked to 
marry on Sunday, their leisure day and time for 
"walking out." 

I was curious as to the burial-place of the black 
population, for the few churchyards I had seen with 
their scattered graves seemed out of all proportion to 
the population of the island. One day when I was out 
for a drive I learnt from a very loquacious driver that 
his elderly relatives were buried in the backyard of 
the little home he called his own, " under de shadder, 
missus, of a big cedar-tree, dar dey lie buried." 

This I found to be true ; that owing to hot climate 
and the distance at which some of these dwellings 



118 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

lie, it is deemed expedient to allow them to 
bury their dead in their own little properties. Of 
course they have to duly notify the fact. I could not 
help thinking that this custom would facilitate any 
nefarious proceedings on the part of those who might 
be benefited by the death of an aged relative, but I 
was assured on good authority that very rarely has 
anything of the kind come to light. 

The peasantry have a great horror of prison, and 
have a wholesome terror of the officers of the law. 
At the same time, they are very litigious, and amongst 
themselves are much given to argument. 

For a person desirous of spending a quiet winter in 
a warm climate, where they would be able to get out- 
of-doors every day for a certainty, I can think of no 
better place than Mandeville for them to come to. 
The drives are really exquisite ; I have been most 
of them, which are generally about 6 miles away, 
returning by different routes. Thus, Fairview is the 
home o£ the widow of a Moravian minister who lived 
fifty years here ; the house is built on a commanding 
situation on a spur of the Manchester Hills, from which 
one sees the sea at Alligator Pond on the south coast 
of the island, 17 miles away, whilst stretching far 
off on the right, an extended vista of the Santa Cruz 
Mountains is to be obtained. Here on the horizon, 
30 miles away, a large palm-tree is pointed out, 
and Malvern House, 30 miles from Mandeville, is 
known far and wide as a comfortable hotel. The 
salubrious air of the Santa Cruz Mountains is much 
recommended for lung complaints by the medical 



A SCHOOL TEEAT 119 

faculty. Another very popular drive is to a spot 
called Bel Eetiro ; this is in exactly the opposite 
direction and is also on the summit of a hill, where 
a house is in course of erection on the ruins of an old 
sugar mill. A grand view over Old Harbour in the 
distance, and the white houses of Porus below one's 
feet, dotted amongst the green trees with the 
Manchester Hills in the background, constitutes 
another very lovely scene. 

One day we had a picnic to an untenanted house, 
from which there was a beautiful view. The verandah 
from the upper storey was converted into a dining- 
room for the occasion, and nothing more enjoyable 
can be imagined than taking one's lunch with such an 
exquisite picture to gaze upon. Everywhere, so far as 
the eye could see, was undulating ground covered with 
tropical foliage, lofty cotton-trees and stately palms 
waved over coffee plantations, and negro huts here 
and there dotted the landscape. The house where we 
lunched, with 100 acres, was to be sold ; the owner 
wanted £1200 for it. 

Life in this quiet Jamaican country town passes 
pleasantly by, notwithstanding its distance from the 
attractions of the " madding crowd." One day the 
shouts of joyous school-children announced the fact of 
a Sunday School treat. Hundreds of children were 
entertained in the Eectory fields, in much the same 
way as similar gatherings in England. Swings and 
cricket seemed most popular amongst the small blacks, 
whilst the little girls' conscious grandeur in well- 
starched clean frocks was quite apparent. 



120 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

Another time the unusual ringing of the church 
bell awakened our curiosity ; we learnt that it was for 
service before the Parochial Board of Manchester held 
its customary meetings. Mandeville also has its 
tragedies; whilst I was there we were all shocked 
to hear that the proprietor of the local hotel had shot 
himself, owing to embarrassed circumstances. This 
establishment is very badly situated. The manage- 
ment for some time past has been unsatisfactory, and 
few visitors have cared to put up there, preferring the 
boarding-houses in the place. Perhaps it is only in 
tropical countries that one realises what walking 
shadows we are — this poor fellow had eaten his break- 
fast a little after seven o'clock that morning — shot 
himself at eight, was taken to his grave at a little 
after five the same afternoon. It happened on a 
Saturday — Mandeville market day; crowds of people 
coming in from the country stayed over to witness 
the funeral. All that afternoon the grave, which was 
being dug, was surrounded by onlookers who, squatting 
round, watched the progress with a curious expression 
of fascinated and morbid interest on their dusky 
faces, reminding us forcibly of the way their ghoulish 
scavengers, the John Crows, large black native 
buzzards, sit upon the house-tops surveying from 
that elevated vantage-spot the ground below, where 
haply some spicy breakfast awaits them in the garbage 
line. 

Nothing appeals so much to the " duppy "-ridden 
imagination of the black as everything connected with 
our transit from this world to the next. The correct 



BUEIAL WAKES 121 

thing is to be laid out in a suit of clean white ducks 
and white gloves ; whilst the women, if they have it, 
are similarly arrayed in clean white attire, also with 
the needful gloves. I asked the reason of this almost 
universal practice amongst them, and was told it was 
to " rise up tidy on de reburrection mornin," and also 
that they should appear fitly dressed to " sit down at 
de marriage supper of de Lamb." They are quite 
familiar with this phraseology, which is current in 
the chapels, which are numerous all over Jamaica ; and 
as their mental powers of assimilation and digestion 
scarcely touch the spiritual plane, the crudity and 
grotesqueness of their ideas of another life, mixed up 
as they are with their hereditary Obeah-worship and 
dread of "duppies," produces curious results. They 
mostly celebrate a death with a wake, especially in the 
country parts. A clergyman's wife living in the Blue 
Mountains told me of a man who was ill, and expected 
quite confidently to die. His wife bought provisions 
for the burial wake. The chickens, with their legs tied 
together, were hung upon the bough of a tree, plenty 
of yams were in readiness, and the savings of weeks 
past were represented in the shape of a bottle of rum ; 
the white duck clothes waved in the breeze in the 
backyard, having been duly washed. Strange to say, 
the man recovered. " It was in de middle of de night, 
missus," he explained to the lady. " I got hungry, and 
I felt under de bed wher dey put a box of sweet 
biscuits ; I eat one, and den I ate up de rest and got 
well." 

This was a box of Huntley & Palmer's sweet biscuits, 



122 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

carefully stowed away for the wake, which had 
resuscitated the invalid. "No man can dead before 
his time," they say in the country parts, and evidently 
this man's time had not yet come. 

It was with feelings of regret that I turned my 
back on this pretty English-looking spot, although I 
looked forward with interest to staying a short time 
on a pen with friends not very far away from 
Mandeville. 



CHAPTER XIII 

MY VISIT TO A PEN— AKAWAK KEMAINS — LEGEND OF THE 
COTTON-TEEE 

Kingston, March 1903. — After passing Kendal, a place 
well known for its yearly agricultural shows, I stopped 
at a station called Balaclava, where my friend in her 
buggy met me. A drive of about two miles through 
very hilly country and across one or two bridges 
spanning one of the many rivers, or springs, which 
abound in this island, brought me to their property. 
A gate stood open, and we drove over a grassy track 
up to the house, which is one of the oldest in Jamaica, 
and called a " storm-house," because it was built after 
the great hurricane of 1722. I was afterwards intro- 
duced to an ancient black lady of some eighty summers, 
who remembered slave times. She had been on the 
estate, and had never lived elsewhere. The house, she 
said, had always been "just de same, missus,' 5 when 
she was a "picaninny and lived in de big niggah 
houses ovar dar," pointing towards the wooded hills 

which lay on my right. My hostess, Mrs M , said 

their property had been bought some years before from 
a coloured family, a death having caused the estate to 
be sold. It comprised 1600 acres, and besides coffee, 

123 



124 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

which was chiefly grown, logwood, pimento and bananas 
were cultivated. A river ran through it, and they had 
on the estate a very interesting cave, about a mile in 
length, if I cared to visit it. I naturally accepted the 
latter proposal, and as we could not drive anywhere the 
next day, the horses and carriage having been promised 
to some friends for the purposes of a funeral, it was 

arranged we should visit the cave. Mrs M 1 found 

to be a most charming hostess, desirous that I should 
see all there was to be seen in the neighbourhood. 

The house reminded me very much of some old- 
fashioned houses I had seen in Spain the previous 
spring. It was a square one-storied building with a 
low, wide verandah running round two sides of it. 
The ground floor was taken up with storage-rooms, an 
overseer's room, and a school-room. Passages were 
built between thick stone walls for shelter in case of 
violent storms or hurricanes. A small portion of grass 
was fenced round about the house to prevent the 
turkeys, chickens, sheep and pigs from entering the 
enclosure. On passing through the wicket-gate of this 
I was conducted up a stone staircase across the piazza 
or verandah into the drawing-room which, with a sitting- 
room, ran the whole length of the front of the building. 
An open doorway, draped with lace curtains, led into a 
large dining-room, which occupied the central portion of 
the house. The bedrooms were built on either side, and 
the kitchen ran along the back of the house. This 
central high-roofed, cool, windowless room is the 
characteristic feature of most West Indian houses built 
in times past. The floors, generally of island cedar- 



IMPROVING CONDITION OF JAMAICA 125 

wood, are polished to a nicety by the black servants, 
who sing as they work at them. 

The family, which consisted of Mr and Mrs M , 

their three sons and daughter, a girl of nine, with her 
governess, a tall, dark West Indian girl, the daughter 
of a neighbouring clergyman, sat down to dinner about 
six o'clock the evening of my arrival. We were waited 
on by two neatly-dressed maids, whose faces reminded 
one of Nubian blacking ; they wore caps on their woolly 
hair and slippers on their feet. 

Mrs M , who is a clergyman's daughter, and her 

husband, the son of a British naval commander, 
belonging to a good old Cornish family, told me that 
they insisted upon their servants appearing suitably 
dressed in the house, however smartly they chose to 
attire themselves out-of-doors. They interested me 
very much in their conversation about the condition of 
the island and the amusing ways of the blacks. 

Jamaica, they said, had certainly taken a turn for the 
better ; and it is commonly said amongst business-men 
out here, that the island can never return to the state 
of depression caused by the failure of sugar. Fortunes 
are perhaps not to be made, but that a living is to 
be earned if people are industrious and ordinarily 
intelligent is conceded on all hands, and was a feature 
to be noted in the Archbishop's address to his people 
for the New Year. 

That Dr Nuttall, who is known far and wide as a 
man of clear-sighted ability, both as an energetic 
organiser and able administrator, is also an admirable 
judge of economic and financial problems in these 



126 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

latitudes no better evidence is forthcoming than a 
study of the methods by which he has guided the barque 
of the Anglican Church through the stormy waters of 
Disestablishment. In spite of almost overwhelming 
difficulties and penury, he has established it on a far 
surer foundation than it ever boasted of before, for 
it has its roots now in the hearts of the people. It 
represents to-day the chosen religious expression of the 
most enlightened and educated classes in this island. 

But although I cannot refrain from speaking of the 
conspicuous ability which has retrieved the position of 
Anglicanism during the last two decades, it is not 
because one depreciates, or would wish to undervalue, 
the self-denying labours of Wesleyan and other non- 
conformist ministers. Pitying the condition of "poor 
slaves " they came to Jamaica in the eighteenth century, 
and commenced their labours when the clergy of the 
Established Church were steeped in avarice, or in apathy. 
Here they live and labour on the merest pittances. I 
heard recently of a nonconformist minister whose 
income, all told, was not over £40 a year. 

Since I intend to devote other pages to this subject, 
I will shorten my reflections on religious phases in 
Jamaica, and will only mention the way in which my 
friends were able to get a church built in this 
neighbourhood. 

Mr M- •, adding some practical training he had had 

in his youth to certain handy-man qualities, inherited 
perhaps from a sailor ancestry, superintended the whole 
of the undertaking when once the spot of ground was 
selected, whereon to build. He was both architect and 



BUILDING OF A CHITECH 127 

builder. Many of the contributors, who could not give 
money, gave their labour and time. The ladies of the 
country-side devoted their energies to the cause, inciting 
and encouraging their black sisters to aid them. 
Appeals to their friends in England for help met with 
generous response, and a bazaar, or rather country fete, 
brought in a very satisfactory sum total. The cost of the 
erection of the church to which I was taken probably 
represents the smallest amount in Jamaica, for one of 
its size. 

It is difficult for us at home with our various secular 
interests improving, or otherwise, to realise how, in the 
life of the country people of our colonies, removed from 
all these, religion, whether sham or real, plays an all- 
important part. Only by living in these out-of-the-way 
places does one at all appreciate this side of colonial 
life, and, having seen it, one feels that if the want of 
solid teaching is felt amongst the educated laity, it 
should be met by the best possible attainable. So far 
as my own powers of observation go, I incline to think 
that the emotional side of religion is not what is needed 
in Jamaica ; they have had plenty of that sort of 
thing. What they ask for is a broad-minded, literary, 
practical theology, which can hold its own with the 
advancing science and democratic faddisms of these 
days, and this it is the duty of the English Church, to 
my mind, to provide. 

An interesting visitor to the house whilst I stayed at 

N- was a local doctor, with antiquarian and artistic 

tastes. I learnt from him that there had been several 
finds in the island of prehistoric remains, consisting 



128 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

of kitchen-middens, refuse-heaps, or shell-mounds, near 
which various objects such as aboriginal pottery, fish- 
bones, and those of the Indian coney had been dis- 
covered. The locations of these having generally been 
near the sea-coasts, and in some cases extending over 
quite large areas on both sides of the island ; the 
numerous limestone caves have provided many skulls 
and relics of Indian origin. A series of rock-carvings 
with deep incisions representing human figures and 
heads, also rude outlines of lizards, birds, and turtles, 
have been found in the parish of St Catherine, possess- 
ing analogous features to similar finds in various West 
Indian islands. Implements too, such as chisels, axes, 
celts, mealing-stones, flaked flints, chalcedony beads, 
perforated ornamental shells, have been unearthed in 
different localities. Columbus spoke of the idols 
worshipped by the Indians of Jamaica, and it is 
interesting to learn that two stone images, probably 
examples of their gods, were sent home for exhibition 
by the Hon. D. Campbell; others, perforated behind 
for suspension, were found in a shell-heap, and probably 
were worn as amulets. In speaking of the Indians 
as the aborigines, it must be understood that this was 
a generic name applied indiscriminately to all the 
inhabitants of the lands discovered by Columbus, but 
the Arawak tribe is distinct from the man-eating 
Caribs who lived near the regions of the Orinoco. In 
Mr ini-Thurn's work, " Among the Indians of Guiana," 
he compares these prehistoric Jamaican objects with 
those of other West Indian islands, and the mainland 
of America, and finds that there are more notes of 



VISIT TO A CAVE 129 

resemblance between them and those of the Indians, 
both ancient and modern, of British Guiana. With 
this last-named race, the former inhabitants of Jamaica, 
as well as many of the aborigines of other islands, 
are supposed to be most closely related. 

It was one of these limestone caverns, where Indian 
remains had been found, that I visited, for it was in 
such hiding-places the poor Arawaks took refuge from 
the tender mercies of their Spanish conquerors, who, 
at the most moderate computation, accounted for some 
60,000 of them before the English occupation under 
Cromwell. The entrance was up a path leading from 
the main road, and was by no means conspicuous, 
but once inside, the cave was spacious and lofty ; 
the stalactites hanging from the roof were of a very 

curious formation. Two of Mrs M 's children 

accompanied me, and an overseer, with two attendant 
" boys," carried torches. It was very rough walking and 
fearfully hot, slippery and wet here and there. In one 
place, which the children called the banqueting-hall, 
from its vast proportions and high roof, we startled 
thousands of rat-bats, who had taken up their habitation 
in the deep recesses of the stalactites which hung over 
our heads. Two were knocked over, and I secured 
one ; they have bat's wings attached to a mouse-like 
body. At last we came to a full stop, an unscaleable 
barrier of rock barred our way; the other side, they 
told me, was one of those underground rivers so 
common in the Cockpit Country, of which I shall speak 
further on ; they run through the interstices between 
the limestone rocks. However, we contented ourselves 

i 



130 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

with what we had seen, and were glad enough to 
breathe fresh air after nearly an hour's subterranean 
exploration. 

The West Indian way of living, especially on these 
pens, strikes one as being the most suitable to the 
climate. We rose before 7 a.m., coffee was ready 
on the verandah at 7.30. The mistress of the 
house fed her poultry, and looked after household 
matters till 11. I made my excursion to the 
cave, walked or sketched until that hour, when the 
household retired to their bedrooms, where baths had 
been prepared ; we then made our toilet for the day. 
Breakfast, which was similar to our luncheon, was 
served at mid-day ; tea about 3.30, before we went for 
a drive ; dinner, being a moveable feast, according 
to whatever constituted the afternoon programme, was 
at any hour between 5 and 7. On this particular 
day the buggy had been lent for a funeral. The 
difficulties of providing for sudden emergencies of 
this nature in a hot country, in a hilly and sparsely- 
inhabited region, struck me forcibly. The seats and 
cover were removed from the carriage, upon which 
wooden planks were laid so as to make a kind of 
platform ; on this the coffin rested. " There are some 
gruesome things connected with funerals in these parts, 
where a coffin or 'box' has to be put together in a 

few hours/' Mr M said. Often, when death seemed 

a certainty, they had to send out "boys" to collect 
the necessary deals for the coffin, and set about making 
it before the breath was out of a man's body. Unless 
the gravediggers were well primed with rum, said he, 



KEEPING DOWN "DUPPIES " 131 

they would not dig the grave, "for fear of duppy 
springing up, buckra." But the corpse expectant may 
recover occasionally, and the coffin then is calmly kept 
for use at a future date. Having seen some graves 
on the estate, neatly bricked over and cemented, in 
one of my walks, I asked if they belonged to the family 

who had formerly lived at N , when Mrs M 

explained to me that it was the custom, if a bereaved 
widower thought fit to take a second wife into his 
hut, to make a brick erection, firmly cemented together, 
over that part of his compound where the former 
partner of his life had been laid to rest, or at any 
rate over the spot where he thought he had buried 
her, for fear of being disturbed by her ghostly wander- 
ings. She had once enquired of a negro, who was hard 
at work on his wife's grave, why he was taking so 
much trouble with it; he told her it was to "keep 
down duppy, missus." 

A beautiful drive one afternoon to the Maggoty Falls 
on the Black Eiver was one of the most exquisite I 
had in Jamaica. The falls were 13 miles away; 
part of the road lay over a savannah, where deadly 
poison lurked in morass and swamp, and no white 
man dared live too near to these breeding-places of 
the malarial mosquito. The exquisite peacock-green 
hues of the Black Eiver water must be seen to be 
appreciated. On either bank profuse parasitical growth 
obscured the most majestic trees ; tropical foliage was 
to be seen here at its very best. 

The heat was most oppressive ; it rained as we 
returned. The suffocating atmosphere in the lowlands 



132 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

made us glad to climb the steep hills which lay 
between us and my friend's estate. 

The Black Eiver is the only navigable one in the 
island ; lighters bring their cargoes up a considerable 
distance into the interior of it. In this neighbourhood 
I remarked again the size of the cotton-tree, with the 
wonderful spurs it sends out from its roots. This is 
not the red silk cotton-tree of India and of Java, known 
as the Simal tree from the seed-vessel containing red 
silk cotton ; the cotton-tree of Jamaica has seed- 
vessels containing white silk cotton. The Arawaks 
attached a religious importance to this tree, and at the 
present day the son of Ham regards it as the haunt 
and home of " duppies." The aboriginal idea was that 
" after the earth was made the Supreme Being, our 
Father, our Maker," made His throne in the cotton- tree. 
The legend of this Arawak belief is worthy of note, and 
I quote it as given by Bret : 

" Still no life was in the land, 
No sweet birds sang songs of love, 
O'er the plain and through the grove, 
Nothing then was seen to move. 
From that bright green throne His hand 
Scattered twigs and bark around, 
Some in air and some on land, 
Some the sparkling waters found. 
Soon He saw with life abound 
Water, air, and solid ground ; 
Those which fell upon the stream 
Found a pleasant shelter there. 
Shining fishes dart and gleam 
Where those woody fragments were ; 
Others sported through the air 
Bright with wings and feathers fair.'-' 



CHAPTER XIV 

OBEAHISM AND COFFEE-PLANTING 

It was whilst staying at this pen that I learnt a good 
deal on the subject of native negro superstitions. 

I had been told by a coffee-planter, whose dealings 
with his black labourers had been somewhat acrimonious, 
that they had "set Obi" for him. Although the 
matter in dispute between him as landlord, and the 
negroes as tenants, amounted only to a few pounds, the 
latter, collectively, had paid as much as £25 to an 
Obeah man to Obi him. He had laughed at them, and 
had pointed out to them the futility of their spells and 
curses, so far as he and his health and prosperity were 
concerned. 

"You can't Obi me. There's not a man among 
you good enough to Obi me," he told them. The 
black woolly pates had gone off to talk the matter over 
amongst themselves, and they had come to the same 
conclusion : they couldn't Obi a white man. So 
ingrained in them is this belief in the spell of their 
wizards, that I am told in the country parts, where 
their ignorance is still almost undiluted, that they look 
upon the " passon " as the white Obeah man. 

I have not seen a negro grow pale at the mention of 

133 



134 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

Obeah, but I have seen him squirm, and noted the 
expression of unqualified terror spreading over his 
features as I enlarged upon the folly of it. 

Mrs M 's governess, who came from a parish 

some 20 miles down the Black Eiver, told me that she 
knew by sight several of these champion swindlers, 
called " Obeah men," and that Obi prevailed largely in 
that neighbourhood notwithstanding the laws passed 
for its suppression. 

Before proceeding further, I will quote from two 
authorities upon this subject of Obeahism which the 
professors of it originally brought from Africa. In 
fact there have been few estates which have not had 
their particular " Obeah man " in times past. 

Mr Long says in his History of Jamaica, written 
about 1770 : "The term Obeah, Obiah, or Obia we con- 
ceive to be the adjective and Obe or Obi the noun sub- 
stantive, and that by the words Obia men or women are 
meant those who practise Obi." 

Mr Bryan Edwards, writing at the beginning of last 
century and commenting upon the probable etymology 
of the word, says : " A serpent in the Egyptian language 
was called Ob or Aub. Obion is still the Egyptian 
name for a serpent. Moses, in the name of God, forbids 
the Israelites ever to inquire of the demon Ob, which 
is translated in our Bible charmer or wizard — divinator 
aut sorcelegus. The woman at Endor is called Oub, or 
Ob translated Pythonissa. Oubaris was the name of 
the Basilisk, or Eoyal serpent, emblem of the sun, and 
an ancient oracular deity of Africa. This derivation, 
which applies to one particular sect, the remnant prob- 



OBEAH SPELLS 135 

ably of a very celebrated religious order in remote 
ages, is now become in Jamaica the general term to 
denote those Africans who in that island practise 
witchcraft or sorcery.'' 

The Obeah man, as I have heard him described, is 
generally a most forbidding-looking person, craftiness 
and cunning being stamped on his features. He pretends 
to a medicinal knowledge of herbs, and undoubtedly is 
well versed in the action of subtle poisons ; his trade 
is to impose upon his simple compatriot. The negro 
consults him in cases of illness, as well as to call down 
revenge upon his enemies for injuries sustained. It is 
wonderful how secret they keep their " Obeahism " from 
the white man. They always " set Obi " at midnight. 
In the morning the stoutest-hearted negro gives himself 
up for lost when he sees the well-known, but much 
dreaded insignia of the Obeah man upon his door-step, 
or under the thatch of the roof. This generally consists 
of a bottle with turkeys' or cocks' feathers stuck into it, 
with an accompaniment of parrots' beaks, drops of 
blood, coffin nails, and empty egg-shells. The same 
spirit of fatalism which makes the black tell you he 
cannot " dead " before his time, causes him to believe 
himself the victim of an unseen irresistible power. 
The dread of supernatural evil, which he is powerless to 
combat, acts upon what nervous system he possesses, so 
that sleep becomes an impossibility, his appetite fails 
him, his light-heartedness disappears as the ever- 
growing fear possesses his imagination more and more, 
and he generally dies. Whole plantations of slaves 
have been known to be almost depopulated by this 



136 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

extraordinary superstition. At one time the Obeah 
rites were so cruel, that the impostors, if caught, were 
hanged; flogging is now the punishment awarded to 
them. Naturally, the deaths by poison are ascribed to 
the powerful supernatural agency at work. If some 
black wiser than his fellows should suspect that other 
than Obeah influence was answerable for the death of 
his friend, his terrible dread of the awful vengeance 
which these wizards would work upon him would 
effectually restrain his tongue from betraying them. 
If a black man loses a pig or a sheep, he immediately 
has resource to the Obeah man, whom he pays as much 
as the latter can extort from him to " set Obi " for the 
thief. When the last-named rascal discovers this, he 
seeks out a more famous Obeah man to counteract the 
magic of the first. Should he find no one to undertake 
the job, he will probably fall into a decline from sheer 
fright of unknown calamity hanging over his head. 
Such is the story of their ignorant priestcraft. The 
law of Jamaica recognises "blood, feathers, parrots' 
beaks, dogs' teeth, alligators' teeth, broken bottles, grave- 
dirt, rum and egg-shells " as the unlawful stock-in-trade 
of the Obeah man. One of these gentlemen was hung 
in all the feathers and perquisites of his profession in 
1760. He had come with other slaves from the Gold 
Coast and headed a revolt in a plantation in St Mary's 
Parish, but the panic-stricken negroes soon quieted down 
upon the death of their leader. This led to a discovery of 
their superstitious practices, which were immediately 
legislated against. 

Bryan Edwards tells a story of a sugar-planter who, 



A DEPOPULATED ESTATE 137 

returning to Jamaica after a temporary absence in 
1775, found that great mortality had taken place 
amongst his slaves, the remaining number of them 
being in a lamentable condition. He tried his hardest 
to find out the cause of the depopulation of his estate, 
but without success. At length he had reason to 
suspect Obi. A n egress, who had long been ill, one 
day confessed to him that the reason of her sickness 
was that her old stepmother of eighty had "put Obi" 
upon her, and that she had done the same to those 
who had died off so quickly. The other slaves on the 
property admitted that since she had come from Africa 
she had carried on this trade and was the terror of the 
place. The owner of the plantation immediately 
searched the hut of this hoary-headed witch, with the 
result that inside the thatched roof the whole of the 
miserable materia Obeah was found. In addition to the 
usual feathers and rags an earthen pot was found 
under the bed containing quantities of round clay 
balls variously compounded, some with hair, or rags, 
or stuck round with dogs' or cats' teeth, also egg-shells 
filled with a gummy substance which, unfortunately, 
was not subjected to a rigid analysis. The hut was 
burnt ; the old woman was not hung, but sold to some 
Spaniards who took her to Cuba. History does not 
record her performances further. But once removed 
from the scene of her evil practices, the slaves lost 
their fear, and the mortality amongst them ceased. 
The proprietor estimated he had lost a hundred negroes 
in fifteen years from the practice of Obeahism. 

There is no doubt that superstition, which always 



138 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 






goes hand-in-hand with ignorance, is born and bred in 
the descendants of Ham. Nowhere, I learn, is this 
more the case than amongst the Jamaican negroes 
inhabiting the mountainous parts of the island. In 
the Blue Mountains, where wooded heights and musical 
murmuring streams suggest supernatural agencies, one 
finds weird ideas among their folk-lore. If you can 
persuade some native to talk about the " duppy," you 
may learn that that which is most feared is a rolling 
calf; you will be told how the sight of it foretells 
great misfortune, and those who have witnessed the 
awful phantom describe it as a huge animal with fire 
issuing from its nostrils, and clanking chains as it rolls 
down the mountain-side, burning everything in its 
path. Other apparitions of a cat as large as a goat, with 
eyes burning like vast lamps, are said to have been 
seen by the mountain dwellers at nightfall in the 
woods. Some of these story-tellers will eat a raw 
rat before relating the ghost stories, to give them, as 
they express it, a " sweet mout." 

Indeed, it was during our conversation on the 
verandah one morning when one of their strange 
notions was forcibly brought to my notice. The three 
boys of the family, after their early coffee at 7.30, had 
gone for a ride, and a swim in the river'; on their 
return an altercation was heard in the dining-room, and 
the eldest son came and showed his mother where 
Theodora, one of the black maids, had actually bitten 
him. The children had scuffled, the servant lost her 
temper, and actually bit the boy till the blood came, 
and then cursed him. Needless to say, she was very 



PETTY LARCENY 139 

soon packed off. But Mrs M explained to me 

that to curse with blood in the mouth is quite a usual 
practice with them. Any amount of Obi, said she, is 
secretly practised in country parts and in secluded 
mountain parishes in spite of the most carefully-framed 
laws against it. Since the police officials are mostly 
black, one can easily understand how the culprits may 
be shielded. The same thing holds good with petty 
theft, of which everybody having property in Jamaica 
whom I met complained bitterly. On this pen where 
I stayed, fowls were frequently taken, yams also and 
bananas ; two years before they had lost a cow and calf. 
The thieves w T ere never discoverable, though the local 
police called at the house occasionally, to get their 
books signed, to show they had faithfully executed 
their rounds. 

To return to our subject, I read in an American 
magazine that one of the well-known Obeah poisons 
is made as follows. The negro takes the juice of the 
cassava plant, which he squeezes on to a copper pan, 
and places it in the sun. The most horrible insects 
are the result, which are dried and ground to a powder. 
The Obeah man or woman drops into the victim's 
coffee or soup a tiny particle of this powder, which 
produces death without leaving a trace of the drug. 
Some of their poisons induce insanity. 

I heard of a black servant-girl who tried to murder 
her mistress by putting ground glass in her soup. It 
was fortunately discovered in time, but not before the 
young woman had absconded, leaving no trace behind 
her. 



140 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

Some planters adopt Obi to ensure themselves 
against thieving. They take a large black bottle, fill 
it with some phosphorescent liquid, and place within 
it the feather of a buzzard, the quill sticking upper- 
most. This they fasten to a tree on the outskirts of 
their coffee-patch or banana-field, where it can be well 
observed by all who pass near. The dusky population, 
firmly believing it to be the work of the Obeah man, 
refrain their thieving propensities accordingly. I was 
told, too, how their fatalism causes them to cruelly 
neglect their sick. 

Not long since an aged labourer on a neighbouring 
plantation was attacked with disease. The proprietor 
ordered special food to be cooked for him, and a servant 
was told off to look after him. The latter never went 
near the old black, so the result was that the master, 
who was a good-hearted man, took personal charge of 
him, whilst his wife brought food to him, even cooking 
it herself. The old negro, however, died, and then the 
friends, who had not been near him for days, crowded 
to the little hut, and not only had the corpse laid out 
in a fine new suit of white duck, but held a wake for 
three nights, when they disposed of enough rum and 
tea, in celebrating his decease, to have kept the old 
fellow going months during his life-time. 

A very usual complaint amongst the black women 
in Jamaica is the information that they have a pain. 
" Missus, I'se got a pain ! " has been said to me in my 
walks in the country, the tone of voice being sepul- 
chrally solemn. 

They have a patent treatment for fever, called the 



NATIVE EEMEDIES 141 

"bush bath." This consists of equal proportions of 
the leaves of the following plants : akee, sour sop, 
jointwood, pimento, cowfoot, elder, lime-leaf and 
liquorice. The patient is plunged into the bath when 
it is very hot, and is covered with a sheet. When the 
steam has penetrated the skin, the patient is removed 
from the bath, and covered with warm blankets, leaving 
the skin undried. A refreshing sleep is invariably the 
consequence, and a very perceptible fall in tem- 
perature. 

There is a native disease called " yaws," which the 
natives treat in their own fashion. The patient's feet 
are held in boiling water ; this, however, is not so 
successful a treatment as the former, for I was told it 
generally results in sending the chill inward, and often 
pneumonia is the result. 

I had mentioned to my kind host and hostess that 
a visit to their coffee-works would be of great interest 
to me, so one day I was shown over the building by 
the overseer. I have since been on other plantations, 
and I find the proprietors of these estates all agree 
in saying that unless a man has capital, it is no good 
coming out to Jamaica for a living, and then he should 
live at least one or two years on a coffee estate before 
he purchases land and sets up for himself. The authori- 
ties at Hope Gardens, the Government botanical 
gardens at Kingston, told me it was precisely the same 
thing with bananas, Many men have lost money 
through not knowing the soils suitable for planting 
coffee. In starting a plantation, or patch — which latter 
means a clearing on a hill, or, in the case of bananas, a 



142 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

bit of fertile valley near a stream — the young trees are 
usually planted 8 feet apart; some even prefer to 
give them more distance. At the end of the third year 
a small crop is generally gathered, sufficient to pay 
expense of cultivation. The fourth year should yield 
a good crop ; the trees, according to the soil, will bear 
from thirty to forty years. The coffee berries when 
ripe are bright purple-red, looking much like cherries. 
The coffee kernels, like cherry-stones, are encased in the 
flesh of the fruit. 

The berries are, first of all, run through a " pulper " ; 
this machine tears off the pulp from the kernel. The 
next part of the process is to run them into tanks 
filled with water, where they are occasionally shaken, 
to wash off any remaining pulp left on them. Then 
they are removed from the tanks and spread out in 
the sun on great platforms made of cement, and left 
exposed till quite dry. These platforms are called 
" patios " or " barbecues " ; the former is the Spanish for 
courtyard, the latter word was used by the aborigines 
to designate the smooth places on which they dried 
their fish and fruit. At one side of each barbecue a 
shed is always constructed into which the coffee is 
swept in case of rain. The coffee, when thoroughly 
dried, is removed from the patio. As far as this point 
the two kernels which form the stone, so to speak, 
of the berry, and which lie with their flat surfaces face 
to face, are surrounded by a horny covering, sometimes 
called the parchment skin, or silver skin. To remove 
this the coffee is run through a mill properly con- 
structed for the purpose. It is then ready to be 






COFFEE-CUEING 143 

shipped, but in the coffee mill I visited, the coffee was 
sorted according to size. This "grading the kernels" 
was done by a very simple machine similar to one used 
by wholesale dealers in England. Coffee used to fetch 
80s. and 90s. for 100 lbs.— now the planter rarely gets 
more than 25s. for the same quantity. Estates in the 
Blue Mountains, which at one time yielded a return 
to their owner of £5000 a year, at present scarcely 
bring in as many hundreds. The labour question has, 
of course, something to do with the difference in returns. 
In times of slavery an estate such as I have mentioned 
was worked by perhaps two hundred slaves. At the 
present day the black will not go so far in the 
mountains if he can get labour nearer home, and to 
expect him to work more than three days a week is to 
expect that the heavens will rain gold for the asking. 
The hillside coffee-pickers are said to be the least 
intelligent of the negroes ; they live far from towns, 
where their brethren absorb a smattering of education 
without effort. These coffee-pickers, who speak an 
almost unintelligible jargon of their own, in which 
Spanish words, African, and even Indian expressions 
are often intermingled, are paid by the bushel and earn 
i| more than in the sugar-fields ; the majority get as much 
as 2s. a day. On arriving from the plantations the hands 
pour their gathering into the measures of the overseers, 
whence it goes straight to the pulping machines. 

It is very clean work, and the women who set the 
fashion to their fellows repair to coffee-picking and 
sorting in their best clothes. A favourite drink with 
them is called matrimony, and is made of equal parts 



144 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

of the pulp and juice of the orange and the star-apple 
mixed with sugar and a dash of rum. Another confec- 
tion to which the black palate is partial is a paste made 
of brown sugar and grated cocoa-nut. In a list supplied 
by the Merchants' Exchange, I read that 69,128 cwt. 
of coffee was exported from Jamaica between April 
1902 and January 1903, against 49,811 cwt. between 
April 1901 and January 1902, which shows the 
industry is prospering. The Colonial Secretary, 
Mr Ollivier, attributes the low prices prevailing to the 
enormous crops produced in the Brazils of late. Ee- 
ferring to the lack of water for the proper washing of 
coffee, which is the case in some parts of the island, 
where the natives are even too lazy to build tanks 
for their domestic supply, he urges combination for 
central plant, and says : " Despite the low prices, if in 
those districts where the coffee is not pulped and 
washed the settlers who grow the bulk of our ordinary 
coffee were to combine, as they have done in some 
instances, to obtain pulping machines and hulling mills 
and to cure their coffee properly, there can be no 
doubt that the export value of our coffee would be 
increased by about 25 per cent. During the fluctua- 
tions of the last two years the prices of these better 
cured coffees have kept comparatively steady, although 
at lower prices than formerly." In a local newspaper of 
the 2nd of March the leading article is devoted to the 
increased prosperity and more promising outlook for 
the coming year. It is quite refreshing to think there 
may be a good time in store for this pearl of the 
Caribbean Sea, after the dismal prophecies and 



HOPEFUL PROSPECTS 145 

pessimistic winnings of the inert and apathetic who 
abound in Jamaica. 

A cablegram, according to this organ of the press, 
had just been received from the Daily Mail, giving 
the information that a group of English, Italian, and 
Brazilian capitalists are forming a trust to monopolise 
the coffee trade of Brazil. It says that the syndicate 
is being supported by the Brazilian government, and 
goes on to state that "it is expected that prices will 
be raised 30 per cent." This is a piece of welcome news 
and of most noteworthy importance to all the growers of 
coffee from one end of Jamaica to the other, since the 
price of that article, with the exception of the coffee 
grown amongst the Blue Mountains, is fixed by the 
price that is paid for Brazilian coffee. And if such a 
remarkable rise in that article should take place, " as is 
foreshadowed in the cable despatch," it will result in a 
period of prosperity for the planters of Jamaica such 
as possibly they have dreamt of, but never expected 
to experience. 



K 



CHAPTEE XV 

COCKPIT COUNTRY — THE MAROONS 

If there is one thing more interesting to the unbiassed 
traveller than others, it is to hear and analyse the 
various opinions expressed upon the subject he or 
she is attempting to master in the spirit of dis- 
interestedness and liberal judgment, by those whose 
lives are being lived in that particular spot of the 
globe temporarily under review. 

"England has treated Jamaica abominably ," I 
frequently heard. She had insisted on the liberation 
of the slaves, then inadequately compensated their 
owners, and when their emancipation upset all 
prevailing conditions of labour, instead of protecting 
sugar, the chief industry of her West Indian colonies, 
and fostering its growth, she fairly knocked it on the 
head by the introduction of free trade. When beetroot- 
sugar first arrived in Jamaica the nails were driven 
into its coffin. Annexation to the United States was 
not desirable, it was declared, but, so far as business 
was concerned, America would make things hum. 

The negroes were emancipated too soon, thought 
certain of the grumblers. Had the Jamaican blacks 
been as well educated as their brothers in the States 

146 



THE EMANCIPATED BLACK 147 

at the time they became freed, they would have a 
different race of peasants in the island to-day. " They 
will never make citizens," I was told. They have no 
idea of the responsibilities of a civilised community ; 
even those who had voting powers on local questions 
were too lazy or too callous to record their votes. If a 
white man suggested to them how better to cultivate 
their patch of land, or if the coffee-curers and shippers, 
for instance, advised them to bring their coffee when 
picked straight to their mills where they had the 
proper apparatus for curing the beans, the blacks would 
immediately suspect the white man had "something 
up his sleeve," and was going to get the better of them 
in some underhand way. 

Things, no doubt, are difficult in Jamaica under the 
very best of circumstances. The negro is unquestion- 
ably a low type of humanity, naturally unintelligent 
and lazy. People forget, however, he has, in the first 
place, only recently discovered that he has a soul as well 
as the white man, and, in the second place, but just 
learnt, the other day as it were, to call that soul his own. 

Nearly two centuries of abject slavery, with its 
accompaniments of forced labour and hard usage, have 
passed over his head, since, as a free savage, he roamed 
the African forests, a fetich-worshipper, the victim of 
the lowest superstitions, and practising every vice 
known to humanity. Evangelising efforts were spas- 
modically made here and there to ameliorate the 
condition of the plantation slaves by those whose 
conscience was in advance of their times ; but when in 
1834 the yoke of slavery was removed with such an 



148 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

ancestry, such a history behind them, what could 
a reasonable person expect of the sons and daughters 
of Ham ! The planters had regarded them as the 
necessary machinery for producing their princely 
incomes when the wealth of the West Indian merchant 
was a known quantity. To improve the breed the 
physically-fittest were, like cattle, carefully selected, 
and the women told off for this purpose given especially 
lighter work to perform. This practice alone might 
account for much of the indiscriminate living which 
called forth the blazing indignation and burning words 
of one of the Keswick delegates, whose work is men- 
tioned on a former page. 

The injustice of his wholesale indictment against the 
character of the women of this island is still felt by 
many. 

One clergyman, of over thirty years' experience in 
Jamaica, and whose church numbers 1300 communi- 
cants, expressed to me his strong disapproval of the 
way in which, this island was held up as a "plague 
spot" for its wickedness, by persons who had no 
practical knowledge either of its history or its in- 
habitants. 

If in the year 1902, 62 per cent, of the children 
born are illegitimate, in 1834, had a census been taken, 
probably there would have been over 90 per cent. Of the 
present 62 per cent., given by the latest returns, I was 
assured that fifty out of that number would represent 
the children of persons living together in faithful, 
though unwedded union. 

It is a matter of history that white overseers on the 



KESWICK INJUSTICE 149 

estates were dismissed on their marriage for obvious 
reasons. Every obstacle was placed upon the marriage 
of slaves ; I believe on many estates it was forbidden. 
Then the example set by the whites has been most 
shameful throughout the history of Jamaica in this 
respect. Considering these circumstances, and the 
very recent growth of any sort of moral standard, one 
is not surprised to hear many persons speak in- 
dignantly of the Keswick delegates and the superficial 
nature of their work. 

It is not inconceivable that the forefathers of these 
gentlemen, who were so incredibly shocked at the 
'immorality of Jamaica, might have been planters 
themselves in distant times ; and if their lot were 
cast in such homes as house the peasantry of Jamaica 
they might not escape that fall which seems the 
common lot of unregenerated humanity. Let the 
ardent reformers who advertised the island as a 
"plague spot," and who would dragoon this childish 
race into a code of morality, remember that a great 
deal is attributable to the cupidity of the white man 
who violated the principles of humanity to procure 
the "foul tissue of terrestrial gold." 

The very handsome marble monuments sent out 
from England, erected to the memory of many of 
these, adorn the walls of the island churches, and 
speak from their sacred precincts to the silent observer. 
Here other than the poetic-minded may gather as he 

wanders 

" Wisdom from the central deep, 
A.nd, listening to the inner flow of things, 
Speak to the age out of eternity." 



150 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

Now, it appears to my limited range of vision that 
from brute animalism both Church and State, working 
into each other's hands, are making the race into 
useful men and women, They know now something 
of the sacredness of marriage and family life, as 
well as of the arts of civilisation. In an interest- 
ing article entitled "Among the Jamaican Negroes," 
by an American lady, Mrs K. J. Hall, published 
in the October issue 1902 of a magazine known 
as The World To-day, the situation is admirably 
summed up in these words : " Deceitfulness and un- 
truthfulness are the besetting sins of the race, though 
the educated are bravely struggling with their less 
enlightened kinsmen. Each year witnesses some 
forward step taken by these people so lately freed 
from bondage/' 

It was with regret that I took leave of my kind 

friends at N , and prepared to extend my journey 

to the extreme limit of the railway, which ends at 
Montego Bay, a port on the northern coast. I had 
first, however, to traverse that part of the island 
known as the Cockpit Country, parts of which being 
remarkably beautiful. From an agricultural stand- 
point, this mountainous stretch is practically useless. 
Isolated peaks covered with tropical foliage form a 
background to a vast labyrinth of glades and valleys 
separating precipitous cliffs. Here and there a few 
smoother tracts occur, and at other places a whole 
series of impassable sink-holes, called cockpits, prevent 
further progress. At the bottom of these deep valleys 
the inhabitants grow a banana-patch, and very sparsely 



COCKPIT COUNTEY 151 

over this hilly country-side does one catch glimpses of 
the wattled huts of the blacks. I believe the country 
has never yet been thoroughly explored ; it offers first- 
rate facilities for a traveller to lose himself in. At 
the present day it is the home of the Maroons, but 
these latter have no distinguishing facial characteristics 
by which to recognise them, the negro type being 
everywhere predominant. There is very little water 
in these parts, for the rain is carried off directly by 
numerous crevices. Springs, long distances apart, 
form underground water-courses, and, coming to the 
surface, disappear again. These are sink-holes ; they 
are generally to be found deep down in some valley. 
The character of the ground around them plainly 
indicates their existence; but occasionally such open- 
ings are to be met with on more level ground, where 
nothing whatever gives a sign of danger, grass and 
brush growing over the edge of the aperture and 
concealing it from observation, until the unwary 
victim steps unconsciously over the brink of the 
treacherous chasm, and disappears, to be seen no more. 
Persons have been known to drop out of life thus 
into a deep unfathomable grave. 

In the south-western part of St Ann's Parish, which 
for its exquisite beauty has been called the " Garden of 
Jamaica," there is an opening into the subterranean 
passages amongst the mountains, associated with the 
most shocking tragedies attended by circumstances of 
unusual horror. This sink-hole is called " Hutchinson's 
Hole." Near by is the ruined home of the monster, who 
was at length brought to justice for a whole catalogue 



152 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

of atrocities; it is still known by the name of 
" Hutchinson's Tower." Travellers who sought hospi- 
tality at this house, which was miles away from any 
other habitation, obtained it, but they invariably met 
with the cruel fate which their host had in reserve for 
all who approached his domain, their bodies afterwards 
being thrown down " Hutchinson's Hole." At length, 
being discovered, he fled ; the whole country rose up in 
pursuit. At Old Harbour Hutchinson found a boat, 
and put off to sea. Lord Eodney was then in command 
of the fleet at Port Eoyal ; hearing of the miscreant's 
flight from justice, he set sail in his own ship, and 
speedily overhauled the merchantman which had 
taken the fugitive on board, captured him, and he 
was afterwards hung at Spanish Town. 

The geological explanation is that the foundation of 
the limestone hills is probably coral reef, the rough 
country lying between these reefs a formation caused 
by the sedimentary deposit produced by the action of 
the sea. After the volcanic upheaval of Jamaica it is 
thought that these limestone basins gradually found 
drainage under the surrounding mountains, and this, 
through successive ages of disintegration, has brought 
these districts to their present rough almost impassable 
structure. The railway affords most beautiful views 
as it curves round the mountains after having skirted, 
for some miles, the Black Eiver on the level country. 
After crossing the third bridge, it commences to ascend 
into this wild and picturesque region. Some of the 
gradients are very steep, and the curves very sharp ; 
but the views to be obtained from apparently perilous 



•3l^X " A1 
•U0TSSIUIU100 



-SIUIUIOO 

jepim pe 
-ippi3 'fj 



ORIGIN OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE 155 

heights into the deep valleys below are well worth the 
journey. 

I have mentioned that this is the home of the 
Maroons, and I cannot do better at this part of my 
travels than sketch the events which led to their 
segregation in these mountains. This involves a dip 
into the origin of modern slavery. Since the fall of 
the Roman Empire, and the rise of Christendom, 
slavery was almost unknown in Europe excepting in 
the serfdom of Moscovy until, in 1442, the Portuguese 
explorer, Prince Henry, whilst sailing down the African 
coast, compelled Antony Gonsalez, his countryman, to 
restore some Moors to their home whom he had seized 
as prisoners, some two years previously, in the neigh- 
bourhood of Cape Bojador. The wily Gonsalez obeyed 
the prince, but received in exchange ten blacks and 
some gold dust, which he took back to Lisbon. His 
friends and acquaintances evidently thought to do a 
roaring trade in following his footsteps, so they fitted 
out thirty ships to pursue this traffic. 

In 1481 the Portuguese built three forts, one on the 
Gold Coast, one on an adjacent island, the other at 
Loango — their king assuming the title of Lord of 
Guinea ! From this date the western continent, so 
recently discovered, was furnished with slaves. In 
1502 the Spaniards employed them to work in the 
mines of Hispaniola, but we read that the governor 
forbade the traffic, as the negroes taught the Indians 
knowledge of their evil ways. But the latter becoming 
scarcer, owing to the cruelty of their conquerors, the 
Emperor, Charles V., granted a patent to certain persons 



156 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

giving them the monopoly of supplying four thousand 
negroes annually to Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, and 
Porto Eico. Herrera, the Spanish historian of those 
days, tells us that this patent was assigned to Genoese 
merchants. From that time the slave trade was an 
established and regular business. 

Nor have we, nationally speaking, clean hands in 
this respect. Sir John Hawkins Knight, commander 
of Queen Elizabeth's navy, found, says Hakluyt, " that 
negroes were very good merchandise, and that stores of 
negroes might easily be had on the coast of Guiney " ; 
he resolved to make trial thereof, and communicated 
that device with his worshipful friends of London. He 
sailed to Sierra Leone in 1562. Two hundred years 
later, so great a trade had this become, that a list was 
prepared by the Liverpool merchants for the Privy 
Council 1772. In it we find in one year 74,000 slaves 
were exported. The British headed the list with 38,000, 
the French followed with 20,000, the Dutch 4000, 
Danes 2000, and the Portuguese 10,000. They were 
captured from Gambia, Sierra Leone, Cape Palmas, 
Gold Coast, Wliydah, Lagos, and Benin, Bonny, and 
New Calabar, the Cameroons, Loango and Benguela 
principally. 

It was Homer who said : " The day which makes a 
man a slave takes away half his worth," and in the 
nature of things it must be so. 

Surely our complicity and share in these dark days is 
being atoned for in the efforts to benefit the black race. 
The stings of the national conscience have been severe, 
but the growth in grace of our legislators a certainty. 



A PRELATE'S INCONSISTENCY 157 

Cheap cotton fabrics, specially manufactured to 
clothe their dusky limbs, come from Manchester. Food 
of the best and of the cheapest is within their reach ; 
and I was even told by a landowner not long since, 
that it was no good going to law for the petty 
thieving which is so irritating, because "the judges 
favoured the blacks " ! 

The Maroons, who inhabit the Cockpit Country as 
well as a town called Moore Town, near Port Antonio, 
on the north coast, are still known by that name, 
although there is practically nothing in their appear- 
ance to differentiate them from the rest of the black 
and coloured races. The word is derived from the 
Spanish marrano, signifying, " a young pig." The 
hardy-looking mountaineers one sees from the carriage 
window of the train, clad in the very sketchiest of 
clothing, are the descendants of fierce and warlike 
slaves of mixed African and Indian blood who, on 
the conquest of Jamaica by the Cromwellian troops, 
escaped to the hills, and defied the new possessors of 
the island to conquer them. 

There seems every reason to believe that when 
Columbus first discovered Jamaica it was thickly 
populated by the Arawaks. 

Bartholomew de las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa, com- 
pares the aboriginal Indians to " ants on an ant-hill " ; 
probably this referred to the inhabitants of the low- 
lands and savannahs on the coasts. 

This Spanish prelate, who figured in history as the 
protector and advocate of the Indians, gave, however, 
his episcopal consent to the patent issued by Charles V., 



158 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

granting to the merchants of Genoa the monopoly 
of the slave trade with the Indies. A writer, noting 
the inconsistency of character in the man who, in 
order to preserve and protect one of the most in- 
teresting aboriginal races of the world, concurred in 
the subjugation and slavery of another, says of him : 
" While he contended for the liberty of the people 
born in one quarter of the globe, he laboured to 
enslave the inhabitants of another region, and in the 
warmth of his zeal to save the Americans from the 
yoke, pronounced it to be lawful and expedient to 
impose one still heavier upon the Africans" Such 
are the extraordinary contradictions the page of 
history reveals to us. It is equally curious to read 
of a plantation with its complement of slaves in 
Barbadoes having been left to The Society in Great 
Britain for the Propagation of the Gospel, by a certain 
Colonel Codrington, which, says Bryan Edwards, " had 
to continue the disagreeable necessity of supporting 
slavery bequeathed to them, still more to occasion- 
ally purchase more slaves to keep up the stock." It 
would scarcely be profitable or edifying, possibly, in 
these days, to search too closely as to how certain 
moneys left to charitable institutions were first 
obtained, but the idea of funds devoted to the lofty 
and elevating purposes of extending a knowledge of 
the Bible amongst the heathen coming from West 
Indian slave plantations, appears to me of unique 
interest. 

The way in which the Spaniards treated the harmless 
and inoffensive Indians is well known, and has never 



THE CRUELTY OF THE SPANIARD 159 

been better described than by Charles Kingsley in 
" Westward Ho ! " To the rough-and-ready sailor of 
the days of Queen Bess, to fight the Spaniard and 
to fight the devil were one and the same thing. Nor, 
so far as their character for cruelty goes, is the modern 
Spaniard one whit better than his ancestors. The 
writer of these pages spent a few weeks travelling 
in Spain, in the spring of 1902, and was impressed 
by the national bloodthirstiness, as exhibited in the 
great ardour and passionate enthusiasm displayed 
over everything connected with the peninsular pas- 
time of bull-fighting. The callousness to suffering, 
and the innate love of cruelty, shown by the labouring 
classes and by the aristocracy of Spain, as when looking 
round the crowded amphitheatre to escape from the 
disgusting sights and sounds of the arena, one noted 
the expression of absorbed interest over every gory 
detail of the fight, were painfully apparent. Old 
women pawn their beds, and girls sell their tresses 
of hair, to be able, at least once a year, to attend a 
bull-fight. The Pope has expressed his abhorrence 
of it, whilst, it is well known, Queen Christina equally 
detests it; but such is the force of the national love 
of the sport, that any dynasty endeavouring to sup- 
press it might count its days as numbered. It is 
no matter of surprise to read amongst the island 
chronicles that in Jamaica and the adjacent islands 
the Spaniards destroyed, within less than twenty 
years, more than 1,200,000 of the native Iudians, 
when one rightly appreciates the devilry of the 
Spaniard. It was on account of the disappearance 



160 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

of these aborigines that African labour was first 
brought across the Atlantic, and owing to the gradual 
extermination of the Indians in Hispaniola, and in 
the Spanish-American possessions generally, slavery 
became a systematised traffic. Naturally these persons, 
who had so inhumanly treated the poor Arawaks — 
and they seem to have been a mild and gentle type 
of savage, very different from the Caribs, who were 
cannibals, and who confined their attentions to the 
eastern islands of the Caribbean Sea — could not be 
expected to treat the African with greater considera- 
tion. When one thinks of the blood-curdling stories 
of the atrocities committed by the subjects of the 
Spanish Crown, both on Indians and Africans alike, 
and then of the ferocity and native savagery of the 
negro in his reprisals — for when the blacks got the 
upper hand their uprisings against and massacres 
of their white masters are amongst the most horrible 
in the history of the world — one shudders at the 
thought of what, if they could speak, the mountain 
fastnesses, the waving cane-fields, could tell ! 

One of the punishments which existed among the 
Spaniards was, that a slave failing to fulfil the task 
assigned to him, was liable to be buried up to his 
neck, and to be left to be devoured by insects ! 

Historians have unanimously declared the Arawaks 
to have been a simple, quiet folk, neither ferocious 
nor treacherous, their government patriarchal and 
dignified. They smoked tobacco from a quaint 
sort of pipe, consisting of a straight tube branching 
off into two others, which they inserted up their 



THE AEAWAKS 161 

nostrils. Why, indeed, so kindly and so superior a 
race should, in the foreknowledge of Providence, have 
been permitted to be superseded in this island by 
the unintelligent and degraded black of tropical 
Africa is an inscrutable problem to human ken. The 
Arawak was an enlightened savage. He mixed very 
little superstition with his theology. He believed 
in the existence of a Supreme Being, all-powerful 
and invisible, whom he worshipped under the name 
of Iocahuna ; besides, he venerated a lower order of 
household and other gods. One reads that these 
people had peculiar ideas of the creation of the world, 
and I have already alluded to the veneration in which 
they held the cotton-tree as the throne of the Creator, 
also that they, in common with many aboriginal races, 
had traditions about a deluge. They believed in a 
future state of existence which, if it differed from 
the happy hunting-ground of the North-American 
Indian's paradise, was to be a place of perfect happi- 
ness. To the limited faculties of the Arawak, that 
would be represented by sensual enjoyments more 
than anything else. 

An anecdote, giving an idea of the estimation in 
which the Spaniards were held by the native Indians, 
is related by the Eev. J. B. Ellis : " A cacique or chief 
fled to Cuba, to escape his European tormentors, having 
in his possession a valuable casket of gold. When 
pursued by the Spaniards, he conceived the idea of 
propitiating the Spanish Deity. 'Behold/ he said, 
pointing to the golden box, ( the God of the Europeans ' ; 
and summoning his friends and attendants, he held 



162 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

a mighty feast in honour of this deity, offering sacri- 
fices, and singing and dancing around the precious 
box. Still the Spaniards approached in their pursuit ; 
and Hatuey, the cacique, told his companions that 
they must be rid entirely of the God of the Spaniards 
before they could hope to be free from their per- 
secuting presence. Accordingly, the golden casket was 
solemnly buried in the sea. Nevertheless, Hatuey 
was captured, and promptly condemned to be burned 
alive. While the necessary preparations for his 
execution were being made, a friar attempted to 
convert and baptize the unhappy cacique, enlarging 
much on the happiness of a future heaven. ' In this 
heaven of yours/ asked the condemned man, 'are 
there any Spaniards ? ' ' Certainly/ answered the friar, 
' but they are all good Spaniards.' ' The best of them 
are good for nothing/ retorted Hatuey, ' and I will not 
go where I am likely to meet one of that awful 
tribe/" 

Let us return to our Maroons, who retreated into 
the hills before the English conquerors of the island. 
In after years, runaway slaves and disaffected persons 
fled to them, thus making them, for over a century 
and a half, a formidable antagonist to the colonist 
in the lower-lying plains near the coast. From the 
mountain fastnesses they harassed the English soldiery. 
Those who carelessly rambled from camps, or from 
the protection of their companions, were mercilessly 
slaughtered with that refinement of cruelty, in most 
cases, which makes the annals of the history of this 
island written, as it were, in human blood. How they 



THE MAROONS 163 

intimidated the peaceful dwellers by their incessant 
and bloody raids, their burnings, and their hideous 
slaughtering, it can do no good to describe. To be 
11 marooned" was a fate too horrible to contemplate, 
even in those days when life was of not so much 
account as we estimate it to-day. Their dialect was 
a barbarous mixture of African and Spanish. They 
practised polygamy ; the women did what labour was 
requisite, and Obeah-worship was the only religion 
they knew. They had been a thorn in the side of 
the English military occupation for many years. At 
last, in 1734, Captain Stocldart attacked them in the 
Blue Mountains so skilfully and so successfully that 
for a time they could do no more mischief in those 
parts ; but the snake was only " scotched," not ex- 
terminated. Again it raised its hydra-head, and in 
1736, a formidable movement under a leader named 
Cudgoe had to be suppressed. After this there seems 
to have been a desultory guerilla warfare, the enemy 
never appearing in the open, but sneaking round the 
plantations ; many whites were killed in this way. 
However, in 1738, Governor Trelawny made a treaty 
with them, assigning them certain lands to live 
in. 

If T have depicted the mildness of character of the 
extinct Arawak, I will here mention what Bryan 
Edwards says of the West African black : — 

a The distinguishing features of the Gold Coast 
negroes are firmness of mind and body, ferocious 
dispositions, but, withal, activity, courage, and 
stubbornness, which prompt them to enterprises of 



164 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

difficulty and danger, enabling them to meet death, 
in its most horrible shape, with fortitude or indiffer- 
ence." This, he goes on to relate, was shown in the 
rebellion of 1760. A negro, who had been a chief 
of his tribe in Guinea, was imported with a hundred 
of his countrymen into Jamaica, and sold together to 
the owner of a plantation, on the frontier of St Mary's 
Parish. At his instigation, although they had received 
no ill-treatment since their arrival, they revolted. 
Gathering themselves together in a body they pro- 
ceeded at midnight to Port Maria, where they 
slaughtered the sentinel, and went off with all the 
arms and ammunition they could lay hands on. Here 
they were joined by many runaway slaves, and. 
retreating to the interior of the island, they killed 
everybody they met, leaving desolation in their 
track. 

At a plantation called Bellard's Valley they sur- 
rounded the overseer's house at four in the morning, 
butchered every soul on the place with the utmost 
savagery, and actually drank the blood of their victims 
mixed with rum. Wherever they went the same 
ghastly tragedies took place. In one morning they 
murdered forty whites and mulattoes. 

At length Tacky, the chief, was fortunately killed 
in the woods ; some of the principal ringleaders were 
taken at the same time, but, as there was every 
appearance of a general insurrection breaking out 
in the various adjacent plantations, the authorities 
decided to make a few terrible examples of the most 
guilty. 



SLAVE-TIME HORRORS 165 

However horrible the details are, one feels that no 
more blame can be attached to those who framed 
such sentences than to those officers in the Indian 
rebellion of 1858 who condemned Sepoys to be 
blown from the cannon. One of these Guinea slaves 
was condemned to be burnt, two others to be hung 
up in irons and left to perish. The former was com- 
pelled to sit upon the ground, his body being chained 
to an iron stake. 

One wonders if he had such a thing as a nervous 
system at all, for he complacently looked on as the fire 
was first lighted at his feet, and without a groan saw 
his legs reduced to ashes, after which, says Bryan 
Edwards, " one of his arms getting loose he flung a brand 
from the fire into the face of the executioner." The 
two which were hung up alive were indulged, at their 
own request, with a hearty meal just before being sus- 
pended on a gibbet which was put up in the parade of 
Kingston. From the time they were first placed there 
until the time they died, not a word of complaint did 
they utter, excepting to remark upon the chilliness of the 
night. All day long they amused themselves in talking 
to their brother Africans, who were permitted by the 
authorities, "very improperly to surround the gibbet. 
On the seventh day," says Edwards, whose descrip- 
tion is that of an eye-witness, "a notion prevailed 
amongst the spectators that one of them wished to 
communicate an important secret to his master, my 
dear relative, who, being in St Mary's Parish, the 
commanding officer sent for me. I endeavoured by 
means of an interpreter to let him know I was present, 



166 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

but I could not understand what he said in return. 
I remember that both he and his fellow-sufferer 
laughed immoderately at something that occurred — I 
know not what. The next morning one of them 
silently expired, as did the other on the morning of 
the ninth day." 

In the Museum which is attached to the Institute 
and Library of Kingston a gruesome relic is exhibited. 
It represents an iron cage, and was unearthed some 
years ago in the parish of St Andrews. It encloses 
the bones of a woman, and is constructed so as to 
fit the human body with bands around the neck, 
breast, and loins ; there are bars to confine the legs, 
and stirrups for the feet, which have sharp pikes to 
press into the soles of the occupant's feet. There is 
a ring at the top of the structure to suspend it 
gibbet-wise. One can well understand the reluctance 
and the dread with which the sugar-planters regarded 
the passing of the Emancipation Bill. 

To be overrun by a newly-liberated race of semi- 
savages was not an exhilarating thing to contemplate. 
Their standpoint was a very different one in all its 
bearings than that of the benevolent aristocrats in 
England, who discussed the measure at their ease, 
mutually congratulating themselves and the nation 
that at last they had obeyed the promptings of 
conscience. 



CHAPTEK XYI 

INDIAN CATTLE AT MONTPELIER — PALMER MONUMENT 
IN MONTEGO BAY PARISH CHURCH — AMERICANS 

After winding through the mountainous regions of 
the Cockpit Country, the train traverses a part known 
as Surinam Quarters. When the Dutch settled here 
in 1672 they intermarried with the negroes, and the 
whole of this section is peopled by their descendants. 
The next place of importance on the line is Montpelier, 
where there is a capital hotel. Here many people 
stay and drive the 10 miles, or so, down to Montego 
Bay. I had friends to meet at the last-named place, 
where I had heard of comfortable quarters, which, 
however, could not compare with the accommodation 
provided at Montpelier Hotel. In the vicinity there 
are two large estates owned by a wealthy Englishman, 
the Hon. Evelyn Ellis, who imported from India at 
great cost the famous Zebu and Mysore cattle ; one 
can see in rambling over this neighbourhood their 
silver-gray hides and curious shapes. They were 
imported for labour and breeding purposes. The off- 
spring of these Indian cattle when crossed with the 
native animal make the most useful stock for draft 

167 



168 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

on sugar estates. These grazing pens are far-famed, 
and cover thousands of acres ; enormous herds of 
cattle roam over them. I did not visit the tobacco 
fields and cigar factory here, though I believe they 
are most interesting. Neither did I take the coach, 
which runs between Montpelier and Savanna-la-Mar, 
24 miles away on the south coast of the island, 
which is a most interesting and prosperous little sea- 
port. Its one street, they say, is made from ships' 
ballast dumped down there by vessels loading with 
s ugar. This road passes another famous pen, that 
of Knockalava, the property of Lord Malcolm, who 
has imported specimens of the celebrated Hereford 
breed of cattle at great expense. Besides these breeds 
the Ayrshire, Devon, Shorthorn, and East Indian are 
all represented in the island breeds. 

The demand for cattle for working in the cane- 
fields has been the reason of grazing farms having 
reached their importance in the commercial and 
agricultural development of Jamaica, the result being 
that the selection of cows for milking purposes has 
been little considered. For those interested in farming 
I note that four-year-old steers, broken to the yoke, 
vary from £20 to £30 per pair, costing about £7 
a head to raise. Hindu cattle fetch the highest prices, 
on account of their quickness and powers of 
endurance, added to which they stand the heat better 
than other breeds. I was told that sheep do not 
compare favourably with other live stock, although 
I never tasted better mutton than I did at Mandeville. 

As the train emerges from a tunnel high above 



MONTEGO BAY 169 

sea-level the most beautiful view is obtained of 
Montego Bay, which derives its name from manteca, 
the Spanish for "hog lard/' and carries one back to 
the days of the occupation of the Spaniard when 
lard was shipped from this port in large quantities. 
During the two last centuries, the place was the 
centre of the sugar industry ; since its failure it has 
resurrected itself again in the fruit trade. 

No more lovely panoramic view of bay, islands, 
town, and green cane-fields could be found than the 
one I looked down upon, as descending a fairly steep 
but circuitous gradient, we approached the plain 
beneath. The little coral atolls, known as the Bogue 
Islands, are extremely interesting, and their shape 
and circular formation can nowhere better be seen 
than before the station is reached. 

The little town presents nothing of any import- 
ance to describe. Like all West Indian urban resorts, 
the dust is ever with you. I drove to my destina- 
tion, " Miss Harrison, on the Hill." A very loquacious 
driver whirled me through the long street, then round 
a sharp corner, another to the left, and then, lashing 
his emaciated-looking horses, he drove them up a 
steep ascent over stones, projecting rocks, anything 
and everything, at the top of which, on a sloping 
declivity, he skilfully turned the conveyance round 
so that I should step out at the entrance. I am 
not naturally nervous, having been used to horses 
in an old country home, and I suppose driven them 
since I was big enough to be trusted with reins ; 
but Heaven is my witness that nothing but a philo- 



170 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

sophical mental review of the chances against my 
being the first one of "Miss Harrison on the Hill's" 
guests to come to grief kept me spell-bound on the 
back part of the shandry-dan belonging to her 
establishment. I went up a stone flight of steps 
leading to the living apartments of what seemed to 
me a very curiously Continental-looking house, built 
on the side of the hill, but from the windows of 
which, with their little quaint balconies in front, 
a magnificent view of the setting sun showed crimson 
and gold between palm-leaves and bougainvillia, the 
latter adorning the front of the house. Miss Harrison, 
an ancient coloured lady, introduced herself to me. 
She told me she owned the house, and that her father 
was Scotch ; she also showed me, with some pride, 
her grandchildren. I did not press her to tell me 
any more of her family history, but, asking for some 
hot water, was shown by " Vaseline " to my room. 

It is curious to hear some of the names bestowed 
in baptism upon the children by their parents, whose 
right to so name them is unquestionable. 

A clergyman once was requested to christen twins 
by the names of Wray and Nephew. 

He hesitated. "Where did you hear of these 
names ? " he asked, for, being a total abstainer, he 
was unacquainted with them. 

" On de rum bottle, massa," was the black's 
reply. 

The most pretentious names I heard of were some 
registered at St Peter's on Ginger Piece Mountain, 
such as Jetorah Alvira Industry, and Almahene Leminia 



CUEIOUS NAMES 171 

Delight. In another church register are to be found 
the following curious combination of names : Caroline 
Celeste Celestina and Minimima Constantina Kelly. 

Those who have read " Tom Cringle's Log " will 
perhaps remember him sitting at dinner in the home 
of a prosperous West Indian, and, as one could well 
believe, ejaculating " By Jupiter ! " after some good 
story. 

" You want any tink, sah," came a voice behind his 
chair ; " me tink you call for Jupiter." 

Tom's astonishment at " the black baboon " being 
named after the god of a classic age is still greater 
when he finds out that a she-baboon of the most 
unprepossessing type, even in the way of negresses, 
was familiarly called in the household "Mammy 
Wenus," and another African slave waiting upon 
them was known as "Daddy Cupid." "Mammy 
Wenus and Daddy Cupid ! Shades of Homer ! " cries 
the laughter-loving, incorrigible middy. 

I found several Americans at dinner, who rather 
liked this old West Indian home, notwithstanding 
the fact that one meets with better appointed tables 
elsewhere. The house was nearly one hundred and 
fifty years old. The spacious sitting-room was cruci- 
form ; the floor, and doors, and staircase were all of 
polished mahogany. Upstairs a long central corridor 
ran the length of the house from back to front ; into 
this all the bedrooms on either side led out. There are 
nice drives amongst the old sugar estates, which, in this 
part of the island, abound ; these form, I suppose, the 
attraction for the small American colony. One lady 



172 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

informed me she was searching for curious old 
mahogany furniture, especially old cabinets and cup- 
boards of native work, for mahogany, in the days 
of Jamaican prosperity, was like gold in the reign of 
Solomon, and was lavishly employed in the inside 
decoration of houses ; now there is scarcely a mahogany 
tree on the island. 

My experience of our Yankee cousins who flock to 
these shores to recruit their forces, or, like myself, to 
avoid the reign of the Ice King, has been varied. 
No pleasanter companion than a well-bred, well- 
travelled American would I wish to come across ; 
but there is a class which corresponds to that 
which we know in England as "bounders," which 
one " strikes " in Jamaica occasionally. This kind of 
person knows everything. If he bossed the island, 
instead of the man who has the " misfortune to 
be the official representative of an effete monarchy/' 
things would be very different. This description 
of the gubernatorial office I quote from an American 
magazine article, not long since put into my hands ; 
but as I think it is impossible for a mind trained 
to respect the traditions of a glorious past, and the 
events of a not inglorious present, to follow the 
warped course of democratic opinion, I will charitably 
overlook the above, which no doubt was penned in 
a spirit of extravagant patriotism, and quote what this 
writer says further on concerning the inhabitants, 
whom he describes as " cheerful and thoroughly 
courteous, neither slavishly servile, but smiling and 
civil, gentle and reasonable." 



AMERICAN ENGLISH 173 

There is one thing, however, which rouses my ire. 
It is to be seriously taken to task over my pronuncia- 
tion of my own language by a man, who, with every 
turn of his tongue, distorts and twists it out of all 
recognisable kinship to any English known or spoken 
in Great Britain. A good story was told me of a 
suggestion made by some original American at a 
time when John Bull and his Yankee cousins were 
hardly on speaking terms. 

Upholders of the Republic declared it to be a shame 
that they should even speak the same language as 
perfidious Albion, and insisted that the English tongue 
henceforth should cease to exist as the national 
language of America. 

" Say ! let them darned Britishers get 'nother lingo 
kinder like for theirselves ! " exclaimed one of these 
gentry. 

Surely Shakespeare and Tennyson would turn in 
their graves could they hear their immortal lines 
quoted in the high, shrill voices, too well-known to 
describe further, of American travellers. English, as 
spoken at the University of Cambridge, is good enough 
for me, I tell them. 

Notwithstanding, I quite enjoyed meeting many 
very charming visitors from the States. We laughed 
together over some of the funny stories one hears of 
the negroes in Jamaica, One of the most amusing is 
that told by a clergyman who was new to their 
customs and manners. 

Soon after landing in Jamaica he was called upon 
to bury an old negro at a settlement called Springfield. 



174 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

The son, a "boy" of about forty years of age, had 
charge of the funeral arrangements. This son had not 
been kind to his poor old parents ; though they were 
living in the next yard and sorely in need, the son 
would not give them a bite of yam to eat. The funeral 
took place on the spot ; first of all, in the house a few 
sentences from the Bible, then a Psalm, then a short 
passage of Scripture, and then to the grave near the 
coffee bushes in the yard. 

He proceeded with the service amid strange scenery, 
the only white man within miles of the place. The 
service having been read to the end, to the clergyman's 
surprise the son burst out with — 

" Now, boys, in wid de dutty ! " 

They then asked if they might sing a hymn. They 
were permitted to do so, and as the parson was ignorant 
as to the kind of hymns they knew, he told them to 
start one. The son at once led off with — 

" Come let us join our cheerful songs 
Wid angels round de trone." 

The clergyman says he made tracks for his horse, 
musing over the strange nature of these people. He 
soon found that the local grave nomenclature is as 
follows: A coffin is called a "box," the grave a "hole," 
and the earth " dutty " (dirt). 

The proverbs, too, are most amusing. 

" Breeze no blow, tree no shake." This is equivalent 
to ours, " You never see smoke without fire." 

" Hab money, hab friends," 



JAMAICAN PROYEBBS 175 

"If you lie down wid puppy you get up wid 

flea." 

" Sickness ride horse come ; him take foot go 
away." 

" Cunning better dan 'trong." 

" Cotton tree ebba so big, little axe cut him." 

" Cuss, cuss, no bore hole in me J kin " (hard words 
break no bones). 

According to their publications, Americans consider 
Jamaica an ideal place for building up the system 
after over-exertion. In four days from New York 
they find themselves in a set of conditions totally 
different from their daily environment in the States. 

"Among the many other advantages possessed by 
Jamaica," says an American, "as a winter resort, not 
the least is that the tourist, whose presence and spoor 
are as the brand of Cain on so many of the natural 
beauties of the world, is almost unknown." 

That it is beneficial to nerves as well as interesting 
to the visitor he further testifies. Men who have gone 
there physical wrecks in January have returned gay, 
jaunty, and full of vigour in February. Nerves soon 
learn to resume their normal functions and cease to 
torture ; sleeplessness is something to laugh at. 

I do not know anything more instructive or offering 
greater inducement to indulge in reveries of bygone 
times than some of the parish churches of this island. 
Notably so does the handsome, spacious edifice built 
of stone in Queen Anne style, at Montego Bay, produce 
that effect upon the thoughtful observer. Two crimson- 
blossomed, lofty, flamboyant trees stand like guarding 



176 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

sentries over the pathway leading lip to the church. 
As you pass along, handsome tombs, some with railings 
round, others being heavy grave-stones with which 
one is familiar at home, but all bearing traces of the 
usage of time, lie scattered on either side. Once inside 
the church and your eye lights on name after name 
on the mural tablets on the walls which strikes you as 
familiar. These are generally monuments to the memory 
of wealthy landowners in times past who possessed 
the much-coveted sugar estates in the surrounding 
district, and where indeed their direct or collateral 
descendants are at the present day it would probably 
be painful to discover ; but before a perfect masterpiece 
of the sculptor's art I stood literally spell-bound. This 
is one of Bacon's monuments, bearing the date 1794, 
and is the far-famed one dedicated to the memory 
of Eose Palmer. There are two stories connected with 
this ; a local legend, which on the face of it is incorrect, 
declared that it was erected to a Eose Palmer, a virago 
famous for her misdeeds, having during her lifetime 
disposed of four husbands. She was finally murdered 
by her slaves, whom she had treated with savage 
cruelty. There is a discoloration around the neck of 
the figure, and some fancy a mark on the pedestal faintly 
resembling a blood-stain; these are believed by local 
superstition to have appeared shortly after the monu- 
ment was placed in situ, manifesting unquestionably 
her guilt. The rector of Montego Bay, however, told 
me the correct version. The sculpture represents a 
most beautifully-moulded female figure gracefully 
draped, and drooping pathetically over a funereal urn ; 



PALMER MONUMENT 177 

she is presumably the embodiment of human grief ; 
upon the face of the urn a medallion portraying the 
features of Rose, the first wife of John Palmer, is seen. 
The wretch to whose memory this monument has 
been wrongly ascribed by those who like a good story 
was an Irish girl, who acted as maid to the first 
wife, and after her decease became the second Mrs 
Palmer. 

A quaint inscription records the sorrows of the 
husband who had this beautiful work of art executed 
in England, to be erected to the memory of a much- 
beloved wife : 

11 Her manners were open, cheerful, and agreeable, 

And being blessed with a plentiful fortune 

Hospitality dwelt with her as long as health permitted her 

to enjoy society. 

Educated by the anxious care of a Reverend Divine, her father, 

Her charities were not ostentatious, but of a nobler kind. 

She was warm in her attachment to her friends, 

And gave the most signal proof of it 

In the last moments of her life." 

" This tribute of affection and respect 

Is erected by her husband the Honourable John Palmer 

as a monument of her worth and of his gratitude." 

The history of the handsome, but cruel and wanton 
successor of this gentle lady is significant of the times 
in which she lived, when the plantation owners had 
the power of life and death and of bodily mutilation 
in their hands. In addition to her depraved morals, 
it is recorded of her that she tortured her girl-slaves 
by making them wear shoes having wooden soles, 

M 



178 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

which were charged with blunted pegs, and which 
must have hurt them cruelly when they had to stand 
upon them. She also beat them with a perforated 
platter that drew blood. This fiend, presumably from 
a fit of intense jealousy, caused the death of a beauti- 
ful coloured girl, who was the mistress of her stepson. 
It is said she had her victim led out to be strangled 
in the presence of all the slaves on the plantation. 
Afterwards, her head was severed from her body, and 
Mrs Palmer had it preserved in spirits ! 



CHAPTER XVII 

DESCRIPTION OF HOSE HALL — SUGAR— THE EXPENSE 
OF WORKING AN ESTATE A CENTURY AGO — BANANA 
CULTIVATION 

The mountains round Montego Bay were the scene 
of a long and unrelenting struggle between the forces 
of the government and the Maroons. After a pro- 
longed struggle blood-hounds from Cuba were im- 
ported to hunt them down. Many ghastly scenes 
took place in the recesses and defiles amongst the 
hills. 

I had myself a curious experience in the old West 
Indian-built house of Miss Harrison, which I give for 
as much as it is worth ; the psychologist might be able 
to interpret it with satisfaction to himself. I was going 
up to bed on Sunday evening, and I have mentioned 
before how handsomely the house was internally 
fitted up with mahogany stairs, flooring and doors, 
when I distinctly heard the sound of a crack of a whip 
immediately in my vicinity. I instinctively turned 
round to see who was coming up behind me, expecting 
to see a man with a riding-whip in his hand. Needless 
to say, there was nobody ; it was a moonlight night, 

179 



180 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

and the dim glimmer of a paraffin lamp shone across the 
landing from some half-open door. I had not been 
thinking or talking of the history of Jamaican families 
in years past. Instead, I remember feeling irritated 
at the fulsome boasting of some of the Americans I 
had just left. 

My hostess was anxious that I should drive out 
to Eose Hall, the home of the Palmers, whose monu- 
ment I have described. I think a visit to this house, 
notwithstanding its dilapidated and ruinous state, is 
useful, in that one can gain an idea of the wealth and 
luxuriant mode of living of the estate owners in times 
when sugar fetched any price between £50 and £70 
a ton, instead of its present price, which is about £5. 
These were the days when fine roads were built, 
handsome houses such as Eose Hall were erected, 
and lands brought into cultivation. An almost un- 
broken girdle of sugar-fields encircled the island. 
When, however, philanthropic effort, headed by 
Wilberforce, successfully passed the Emancipation Act, 
which provided that from and after the 1st of August 
1834, all slaves in the colonial possessions of Great 
Britain should be for ever free, with an intermediate 
state of four and six years, the condition of the sugar- 
planters was lamentable. They were left with old 
machinery, scarcity of labour, and poor markets. 
Indignation was rife, and they threatened to transfer 
their allegiance to the United States of America. The 
immediate results of emancipating negroes from slavery 
has been practically the same everywhere. After the 
adoption of free trade many of the estates were simply 






HOME OF ROSE PALMER 181 

abandoned, or sold for next to nothing. Probably 
those who could have foreseen how the fruit trade 
would eventually supersede sugar, would have clung 
to their lands at all costs. 

To give my readers some idea of the interior of a 
planter's house in the eighteenth century, I quote from 
a journal of the Institute of Jamaica a description 
of the Palmer mansion built for £30,000 in 1760, 
and richly furnished : " A gap through the boundary 
wall leads to an avenue cf trees, selected for their 
beauty and fragrance from the endless variety which 
luxuriates in a southern clime. There may still be 
seen the cocoa, with its fringy leaves alw r ays graceful 
and always beautiful; the quaint cotton, the king of 
the forest, from whose huge limbs countless streamers 
of parasitical plants hang pendent exposed to the 
breeze ; the palm, with its slender speckle of most 
delicate green ; the spreading mahogany, with its small 
leaves of the deepest dye ; and there may be found the 
ever-bearing orange, with its golden fruit and flowers of 
rich perfume. Neglect, too, has been here, and the 
avenue once so trim and neat is now overgrown with 
weeds and bushes, so much so that the remainder 
of the ancient wall can scarce now be seen. 

"Passing about a half mile through the grove you 
come suddenly in front of a stately large stone 
mansion, prettily situated on the top of a gentle slope. 
The first thing that strikes you is its size and magni- 
tude, the next, the imposing appearance of the flight of 
steps leading to the main entrance of the mansion. 
These are 14 feet high, built of large square 



182 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

stone (hewn), and so arranged that the landing-place 
serves as a portico 20 feet square. A few brass 
stanchions, curiously wrought and twisted, serve to 
show what the railing had been, but the few remaining 
are tarnished with verdigris and broken, bruised and 
turned in every direction. Magnificent, massive fold- 
ing-doors of solid mahogany, 4 inches thick, with 
panels formed by the carver's chisel in many a scroll 
and many a device, are upheld by brazen hinges which, 
fashioned like sea-monsters, seem to bite the posts on 
which they hang. These doors are in front of the 
main hall, a room of lofty dimensions and magnificent 
proportions, 40 feet long, 30 wide, 18 feet high, formed 
of the same costly materials as the doors, carved in 
the same manner out of solid planks and fashioned 
in curious and antique forms, while the top is 
ornamented with a very deep cornice formed after 
the arabesque pattern. The floor is of the same highly 
polished wood. Three portraits in richly carved 
frames and painted by a master -hand immediately 
attract attention. One of these portraits represents 
a hard and stern-featured man clothed in the scarlet 
and ermine robes of a judge. Another is of a 
mild, benevolent-looking, gentlemanly person, dressed 
in the fashion of the olden times with powdered 
hair, lace cravat, ruffles and silk stockings, buckles, 
brocaded vest and velvet coat. The third is a female 
of about six-and-twenty, and, if the painter has 
not flattered her, she must have been of exquisite 
beauty." 

Sugar is talked, and has been talked ad nauseam 



SUGAE PROSPECT 183 

in Jamaica. In one of the leading organs of the 
Jamaican press I read, in this first week of March 1903, 
that according to the latest reports from New York 
the sugar industry is looking up, an appreciable rise 
in the price of crystals is announced, and this, it is 
believed, will cause a certain increase in the price 
of the lower grades of sugar as well. One rejoices to 
hear that the refiners of sugar in America are begin- 
ning to be nervous, lest, in consequence of the coming 
abolition of the Continental bounty-fed system, the 
British West Indian sugar should find its way to the 
markets of the mother-country. There is a special 
cane called the Muscovados which to the American 
refineries is indispensable, and which apparently comes 
in greater bulk from our colonies. In addition, the 
Brazil crops are not so plentiful as they have been. 
This being so, there seem to be ample grounds for 
the hope entertained that the prospects of the sugar 
industry of this part of the Empire are heightening 
considerably. Alluding to their hope that in the 
future there is promise of higher prices generally 
for cane-sugars, and also to the development and 
increased outputs of the fruit trade, the writer 
concludes a most encouraging article with the belief 
that, all things taken into consideration, Jamaica may 
be said to be on the eve of a great agricultural and 
industrial boom. 

Now the cultivation of sugar on a large scale 
implies the circulation of large sums of money. 
But those who confidently talk about its revival, 
and who think that as soon as the bounties are 



184 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

abolished the country will leap back into its former 
prosperity, forget a very important item on the pro- 
gramme. Certain soils only produce sugar profitably. 
The area most suitable for the cultivation of cane 
as a staple article of commerce is a limited one. 
Westmoreland, Trelawny, and St Thomas, are the 
parishes where sugar pays for growing because of their 
proximity to ports. In these days of keen competi- 
tion, every mile of carriage means so much out of the 
profits. 

I find from a statement supplied by the Merchants' 
Exchange that the total export of sugar from 1st April 
1902 to 10th January 1903 was 13,468 tons, against 
11,523 exported during the same period in the preced- 
ing year. 

The beautiful and verdant green of the waving 
cane-fields is one of the most beautiful and character- 
istic sights of the island; the cane grows from 4 to 
7 feet high, occasionally it attains a height of 12 feet. 
The old mills were worked either by water, wind, or 
cattle. The machinery used for squeezing the juice 
out of the sugar-cane consisted of three upright iron- 
plated rollers, or cylinders, 30 to 40 feet in height. 
The middle one, to which the moving power was 
applied, turned the other two by means of cogs. 
Between these rollers the canes previously cut short 
were twice compressed. Having passed through the 
first and second rollers they were turned round the 
middle one by a circular piece of framework, or screen, 
called the dumb returner, forced back through the 
second and third, which squeezed them perfectly dry. 



SUGAR IN THE OLDEN TIME 185 

The cane-juice was received into a leaden bed, and then 
conveyed into a vessel called the receiver ; the refuse 
cane-trash was used for fuel to boil the liquor. The 
juice ordinarily contains eight pints of water, one pint 
of sugar, one pint of oil and mucilaginous gum, with a 
portion of essential oil. 

A mill worked by cattle was considered satisfactory 
if it passed sufficient canes in an hour to yield from 
300 to 350 gallons of juice. As the cane-juice ferments 
so easily, canes must be ground as soon as they are cut, 
and great care requires to be exercised in throwing 
aside those which are tainted. 

Bryan Edwards sketches the expenses and profits of 
a sugar estate in the years 1781 to 1791, and I think 
it will be interesting to unearth it out of his capacious 
history, which I confess without reserve to be my 
happy hunting - ground for reliable information con- 
cerning Jamaica's eventful past. 

He divides the necessary outlay under three heads 
those of (1) Lands ; (2) Building ; (3) Stock. 

(1.) Lands. 

To buy 600 acres of land . . ,£8,400 
Clearing 300 and planting it at £12 per 

acre 3,600 

Enclosing and fencing altogether . . 700 
Clearing and planting 100 acres with 

provisions 700 

Clearing and planting 100 acres with 

guiney-grass 700 



Total (in Jamaica currency) £14,100 



186 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

(2.) Buildings. 

Water or cattle mills, boiling-house and 
fittings, curing-house and fittings, 
overseer's house, trash houses, 
hospital, prison for negroes, mule 
stables, shops, sheds, utensils 
(Jamaica currency) . . . £7,000 



(3.) Stock. 
250 negroes, 80 steers, 60 mules . .£20,380 

Lands .... ,£14,100 

Buildings .... 7,000 

Stock .... 20,380 



Total (Jamaica currency) £41,480 
(English sterling) . £30,000 

The produce of such a plantation at the London 
markets, 1781-1791, he reckons thus : — 

Sterling. 
200 hogsheads of sugar . . £3,000 
130 puncheons of rum . . 1,300 



Gross returns . . . £4,300 



The net returns, after sundry necessary disbursements, 
he gives as 7 per cent, on a capital of £30,000. 

I was enabled to go over a rum factory, perhaps one 
of the best known in the island : Appleton rum finds 
its best market in Jamaica, and is not exported at all. 
In this case the rum is made from the wdiole of the 
cane instead of from the molasses or skimmings of the 
boiling fluid. 



FALMOUTH HARBOUR 187 

Some of the tourists whom I met had driven from 
the quaint little town of Falmouth to Montego Bay, 
a distance of 24 miles along the coast. They were 
charmed with the beautiful view's, especially the grand 
sunset as they approached Montego Bay; and I do 
not think I have ever seen more lovely colouring any- 
where than here where the exquisitely soft tints seem to 
melt into each other. The Government is waking up 
seriously to the fact that the harbour of Falmouth 
should be improved, and the people of Trelawny have 
voiced their grievances to some tune since £12,000 are 
to be spent in deepening the channel. 

The Hon. L. C. Shirley, at the last meeting of the 
Parochial Board, very emphatically urged the need of 
shipping facilities. He had seen in the days of sugar 
prosperity five or six barques in the harbour at one 
time, but, said he, " Sugar and rum being at their lowest 
ebb, something else must be done. Bananas meant 
money, but if we have no facilities for shipping what 
would be the good of planting ? " 

One of the best authorities in the island on agri- 
cultural possibilities and prospects informed me, not 
long since, that there were old sugar estates to be 
bought in the neighbourhood of Falmouth for a mere 
song, which, if purchased now that there is the 
certainty of improving the harbour, would in a year or 
so return 100 per cent, if turned into banana planta- 
tions. I rather wished I were a man with a capital of 
£2,000, but when I asked if banana-growing required 
much experience- — 

"Yes," said he, "A young fellow should get on a 



188 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

banana estate for a year at least, before laying out his 
capital." 

" It is a matter of learning which soil is particularly 
adapted," I suggested. 

" Not only that," he rejoined, " but an inexperienced 
man has no idea how to manage his labourers, and there 
are always sharks ready to take advantage of his 
ignorance." 

Which latter I knew to be sapient wisdom, from the 
unhappy experience of a youthful relative whose 
gullibility was apparent to an antipodean swindler, with 
the result that the sorrow-stricken youth learnt wisdom 
at the expense of a lightened purse. 

There is nothing chimerical in the success of the 
banana trade. America statistically absorbs most of 
this produce. On all sides we hear of the variety of 
ways it is useful as an article of diet, whilst its 
nutritive powers are unquestioned. 

America largely buys banana flour. In its unripe 
stages it is more properly a vegetable. Green bananas 
mashed and eaten like potatoes form most useful food, 
whilst ripe bananas, dried and put up in boxes like figs, 
are both wholesome and satisfying. From the 1st of 
April 1902 to 10th January 1903, 90,204,597 bunches 
of bananas were exported from Jamaica. 

In the lowlands, where the climate is hot and moist, 
bananas are at their best. In preparing ground to grow 
them the land is ploughed with eight or ten oxen, and 
the plants are put in from 10 to 15 feet apart. The 
height they attain is a matter of soil and cultivation. 
At the end of the first year a crop is ready to be 



BANANAS 189 

gathered. Each plant produces one bunch only. The 
plants send out suckers from their roots, which are 
allowed to grow. Thus, when the first plant is cut 
down as worthless, another is ready to bear ; others are 
in different stages of growth. This goes on for about 
seven years, when it is needful to plough again and 
replant the ground in some places, but I have been told 
of the same banana-trees remaining in bearing thirty 
and forty years. As the price fluctuates, it has not the 
element of certainty that coffee has. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

MONEAGUE HOTEL — THE TROUBLES OF CHRISTOPHER 

COLUMBUS 

Returning from Montego Bay, I went by rail to 
Ewarton, which is in the centre of Jamaica. To go 
there I had to change at Spanish Town, which is 10 
miles or so from Kingston. There is only one train 
every day that runs the whole distance from Montego 
Bay to Kingston ; this starts at eight o'clock in the 
morning, stopping at every station, and reaches its 
destination about four in the afternoon. On this 
occasion I fell in with a number of the island clergy, 
who entered the train at every stopping-place, several 
having driven distances of 25 and 30 miles, having 
risen before daybreak. Since most of the cocks in 
Jamaica are different from their feathered kindred 
of other climes, and keep up one unhallowed chorus 
of crowing all through the night, it is not a great 
difficulty to tear yourself from your couch. 

They were on their way to attend the yearly Synod, 
which holds its meetings every January, or, as in this 
case, February. I met my new acquaintance, the 
rector of Montego Bay, in the train. He told me 

ISO 



A HARD-WORKING CLERGYMAN 191 

he had been over twenty years in Jamaica, and he 
was, I should say, a man of about forty-five years of 
age. 

"But you have been home of course several times 
in those years ? " I questioningly asked him. 

"Not a bit of it, Madam," was his curt rejoinder. 
Apparently he was in the best of health, and had, to 
my knowledge, taken four services without assistance 
the day previous, which was Sunday, that I never 
imagined for a moment it was possible to keep so 
much vitality and energy going without occasional 
recruiting sea-voyages and change from this enervating 
climate. 

" How do you think I look ? " asked he, slapping 
his chest, and drawing himself up to his full height, 
which was not beyond that of the average male 
adult. 

" Very fit/' was my reply. 

" Go home and tell them what a man can look like 
out here, after twenty years of total abstinence, and 
never going home once in all that time." A mischievous 
gleam shot from his eyes as he spoke. 

" How many services did you take yesterday ? " I 
asked him. 

"An early celebration and a baptism before I met 
you." This had been about half-past nine in the 
morning, when I was sitting on one of the crazy tombs 
in the churchyard, with my attention divided between 
the sketch I had been making and my dread of being 
walked over by a huge spider, or chance scorpion, to 
say nothing of occasional futile attempts to thin the 



192 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

mosquito life of the island, for they always pestered 
me so when sketching that I had no conscientious 
scruples as to massacring them mercilessly. 

" Yes," I said ; " then you had a second celebration 
after the eleven o'clock service, and you preached a 
good twenty minutes/' 

" Did you time me?" I laughed. " Well ! " con- 
tinued he, " I had a children's service in the afternoon, 
and evensong at six, so you will admit I had a fairly 
busy day." 

" What a pity they don't send out our curates to 
do a good ten years in the colonies before giving them 
livings in England ! " I exclaimed, thinking of some 
of the weaklings who complained of being overworked 
at home. Our conversation drifted to other topics. 
I said the black race struck me as being nothing more 
than grown-up children, and he agreed that that was 
the best way of regarding them. He told me of the 
reduced circumstances which some families owning, 
formerly, large estates had fallen into ; this, accord- 
ing to him, being the result of reckless extravagance, 
and never putting aside for a rainy day. 

"They must have had splendid incomes," I com- 
mented. 

" There's no doubt of it," assented he. 

" What did they spend their money on ?" I asked, 
thinking of the hundred and one ways, nowadays, in 
which money flies, and of the really few amusements 
that would present themselves in the middle of the 
eighteenth century to these planters. 

" Themselves," he answered, without hesitation ; " in 



MOUNT DIABOLO 193 

luxuriant living, in dress, and in having a good time 
at home." 

Before Spanish Town was reached, I met some 
persons whom I had seen previously at Mandeville, 
and we drove together from Ewarton Station over 
Mount Diabolo, which is 2000 feet above sea-level, 
and from whence most exquisite views are to be 
obtained over St Thomas in the vale. This is one of 
the best drives in the island, and certainly should not 
be missed. The Moneague Hotel is a very spacious and 
comfortable building ; it stands on a hill, and before you 
turn up towards it, a huge cotton-tree, with the longest 
spurs I ever saw, stands in the centre of a pasture, 
extending its gaunt limbs from its huge trunk as a 
terrestrial octopus might be supposed to do. I went 
up to Moneague especially to visit this part of the 
country, which is perfectly lovely whichever way you 
go. The day following my arrival I took a forty-mile 
drive. A most entertaining coloured man acted in 
the capacity of coachman, and as we drove along in a 
one-seated buggy drawn by a pair of strong ponies, he 
told me the names of those trees with which I was 
not acquainted. I faintly suspected in one or two 
cases he drew upon his imagination : he did not answer 
quite so glibly as he had done previously. We passed 
very fine grazing estates, and I gathered from my 
loquacious informer that some persons in the island 
had made very fair fortunes through grazing and 
cattle-rearing. The chief charm of this long day was 
the road leading through Fern Gully down to the small 
town of Ora Cabessa, on the north side of the island. 

N 



194 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

You drive between enormously high cliffs covered with 
every variety of fern ; the moisture and shade causes 
their growth to be quite gigantic, and you look up 
to the bit of blue sky overhead through the inter- 
lacing and waving greenery of countless tropical plants. 
On emerging from the Gully you arrive at Ora 
Cabessa, where a police-station, a post-office, and 
a telegraph-station acquaint you with the fact that 
you are once more in the haunts of civilisation. 
Here groves of cocoa-nut-trees bend almost down to 
the water's edge, and the coast scenery is lovely. Ochos 
Eios, meaning " eight rivers/' is a little further on. 

In the vicinity are the two waterfalls made by the 
Eoaring Eiver in its course to the sea; the lower is 
very pretty, but the fall a mile higher up in private 
property is well worth seeing. Here a more villainous 
breed of ticks seems to abound, for everyone warns you 
to beware of them, and several men we met on the 
road who had visited the falls, were diligently inspect- 
ing their nether garments ; they were what the native 
contemptuously calls "walkfoot buckra," as distin- 
guished from "carriage buckra." There are many 
funny nigger sayings which, the longer one lives in 
Jamaica, the more one grasps their significance. " To 
a dog's face say Mr Dog, behind his back Dog," is one 
of them. Substitute for the dog the white man, and 
you have learnt a fundamental truth. I was told by 
my coloured coachman that no native will wear cast- 
off clothing. Another thing that interested me, as 
pertaining to the native folk-lore, was the reverence 
in which children hold spiders. They will curtsey 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS 195 

to them, talk to them on their way to school. Some 
persons say this is the last vestige of some old African 
totem-worship connected with this insect. I have not 
mentioned the land crabs which abound at these 
waterfalls. The natives call them u soldiers " ; they are 
quite harmless, and I have heard that they are eaten 
by the blacks. 

I cannot turn my back on this lovely northern coast 
without alluding to the ever-memorable landing of 
the great Columbus, which happened in 1504, during 
his fourth journey to the New World near this spot. 
He had discovered the highlands of Jamaica in 1494, 
and in the united names of Ferdinand and Arragon 
had taken possession of it. A devout Catholic, he 
could do no otherwise than obey the decree of Pope 
Alexander VI. to the effect that "omnes insulas et 
terras firmas inventas et inveniendas, detect-as et 
detegendas versus Occidentem" were given to the 
Spanish Crown. 

It is sorrowful reading which tells us how, suffering 
from base ingratitude, in tempestuous weather, and 
with much difficulty, he reached a haven since known 
as Don Christopher's Cove, on the north side of the 
island, with two crippled and leaking ships, which he 
ran aground to prevent their foundering. He quite 
made up his mind to die there. His crews revolted, 
the Indians deserted him, the Governor of Hispaniola 
mocked his misfortunes. In much suffering, and 
amongst his rebellious countrymen, he writes to the 
King of Spain, and says how low "his zeal for the 
service of King Ferdinand and his mistress Queen 



196 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

Isabella had brought him, how his men who were in 
health mutinied under Poras of Seville." He adds : 
"As my misery makes my life a burthen to myself, 
so I fear the empty title of Vice-Eoy and Admiral 
render me obnoxious to the hatred of the Spanish 
nation. 

"It is visible that all methods are adopted to cut 
the thread that is breaking, for I am in my old age 
oppressed with insupportable pains of the gout, and am 
now languishing and expiring with that and other in- 
firmities among savages, when I have neither medicines 
nor provisions for the body, priest nor sacrament for 
the soul. My men in a state of revolt, my brother, 
my son, and those that are faithful, sick, starving, 
and dying. Let it not bring a further infamy on the 
Castilian name, nor let future ages know that there 
were wretches so vile in this, that think to recommend 
themselves to Your Majesty by destroying the un- 
fortunate and miserable Christopher Columbus." In 
conclusion, he pathetically appeals to Queen Isabella : 
"She, if she lives, will consider that cruelty and 
ingratitude will bring down the wrath of Heaven, so 
that the wealth I have discovered shall be the means 
of stirring up all mankind to revenge and rapine, and 
the Spanish nation suffer hereafter, for what envious, 
malicious, and ungrateful people do now." 

The Spaniards brought their priests over with them 
when they took possession of the island. The religious 
ceremonies were conducted in handsome edifices, 
although no traces remain of them. At the first 
capital, Seville D'oro, founded by Diego, the dis- 



A BEAUTIFUL DRIVE 197 

coverer's son, a collegiate church was built. In 1688 
the founder of the British Museum declared that 
there were ruins of ecclesiastical buildings at Seville, 
which were situated near the modern St Ann's Bay, 
but all such remains have long since passed away 
with the increased agriculture and the rapid growth 
of tropical flora. No one seems able to tell why 
the Spaniards changed their seat of government in 
1530, from Seville D'oro to St Jago de la Vega, the 
modern Spanish town, whefe an abbey, churches, and 
chapels were built. 

I returned to Moneague vid Claremont. The road 
ascends for a long distance through fine estates ; it is 
well graded, and, looking back, lovely peeps of the 
sea are afforded. At the top of the hill it is well to 
leave the carriage and climb up on a gate or wall, 
when an extended coast scene, including St Ann's 
Bay, is visible. A pretentious little fruit-boat, busy 
as a honey-bee, was puffing away towards Ora Cabessa, 
where she anchored, for the coast is too shallow at 
most of the ports where the ships call for fruit to 
allow of their coming alongside the wharf. The sea 
was an exquisite blue, and a band of bright green 
cane-fields bordered the coast, whilst pimento-trees 
and cocoa-nut groves waved in the distance. 

I told the driver to be merciful to his beast up that 
long hill. I was tired, I said, and had come a long 
journey the day previously. When I told him I had 
come from Montego Bay to the hotel, he expressed 
surprise that I was able to take so long a drive as 
that we were going. 



198 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

" Ladies 'bout yar would go to bed after a journey 
like dat, and not rise up again till de turd day." 

I told him Englishwomen were able to endure much 
greater hardships than West Indian ladies. 

" Did I not want a coachman to take back with me ? " 
he asked. He would so much like to go to England. 
A little further conversation, and I elicited from him he 
had a weak lung. That, I said, put that matter com- 
pletely out of the question. If in Jamaica his lungs 
were weak, he would not live a month in our colder 
climate. That seemed to upset his calculations. 

" Besides, you would not like the food," I told him. 
"We have not half the good things at home you have 
here." And we fell to discussing foods. 

" G-ive a man out yar salt-fish and akee and roasted 
bread-fruit far breakfast, and he trow away all de ham 
and eggs into de street," said he. 

We met some desperately poor, ill-clad negroes, and 
I asked if they were not very idle. 

" No, missus ; they can't get work to do. They don't 
know how to do any ting properly for to get any 
money. Some of dem don't earn eight dollars in a 
whole year," he added. 

I reckoned up eight dollars as not quite two pounds, 
and felt aghast at that for a living wage. The driver 
had all unwittingly put his finger upon a sore spot in 
the educational policy of Jamaica. The present gener- 
ation are mostly too grand to work with their hands as 
their parents did before them. They connect domestic 
service and work with slavery, and every girl who has 
a smattering of knowledge wants to be a school-teacher 





if 
I 






THE COCOA-NUT PALM 199 

or a dressmaker. The next generation, it is to be hoped, 
will not be educated above their position in life, then 
existence in Jamaica for white women may cease to be 
the harrowing anxiety it seems to be at present. We 
are not ignorant of the difficulties of housekeeping 
at home, with a class of women-servants who are 
not trained to work, and who are neither reliable 
or conscientious, but, with the thickheadedness of 
the black thrown in, the case is much worse out 
here. 

I will not conclude this chapter without alluding to 
the cultivation of the cocoa-nut palm-tree. Owing to 
the long time it is necessary to wait for the first crop, 
not so much has been done in growing this tree. It 
seldom bears until seven years old, but when once it is 
in good bearing, it goes on for a hundred years. The 
yield of a tree averages one hundred nuts yearly ; the 
bright green blossom and the ripe fruit appear simul- 
taneously. The cocoa-nut palm grows best near the sea, 
but does not require such rich, moist soil as the banana. 
The rule is that as soon as the tops are out of reach, 
the land on which they grow can be put into pasture. 
The nut is mostly harvested before it is quite ripe. 
Cocoa-nut milk is made from gratings of the kernel. 
They carve the shell, and it serves many purposes. The 
dried kernel is known as " kopra," and is boiled clown 
for the preparation of oil. The solid fat is made into 
candles, and the oil is used for cooking and for lamps. 
The cake which is left, or " poonac," is a good food for 
cattle, also used as a manure. The husk of the fruit 
yields a fibre which is made into cordage, nets, etc. 



200 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

The tender leaves are made into mats and boxes, the 
mature into matting, sails, etc. The ash yields potash. 
The midribs of the leaflets are converted into brooms 
and brushes ; the stalk of the spadix into brushes for 
whitewashing. Other parts are also useful. 



CHAPTEE XIX 

WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN JAMAICA — A BREAKDOWN ON THE 
RAILWAY — PORT ANTONIO — CHESTER VALE 

Eeturning to Kingston I took up niy quarters for a 
short time at Myrtle Bank Hotel. A delicious sea- 
breeze cooled the air during the daytime, whilst at 
night one could sleep better than at many hotels 
where I have stayed. One I know of is intensely noisy. 
Just when you are falling off to sleep some person in 
the next room violently thrusts open his door and shies 
his boots down the corridor, instead of quietly putting 
them outside, then shuts it with a bang, without a 
moment's consideration of the fact that other persons 
may be disturbed by the might of his biceps ; this, 
with the incessant crowing of cocks and barkings 
of dogs occasionally makes night hideous to con- 
template. 

Whilst here, I took the opportunity of attending one 
or two of the meetings of the Anglican Synod. 

The disestablishment of the Church of England in 
Jamaica took place some thirty years ago ; but as I 
intend to give a slight sketch of the ecclesiastical 

201 



202 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

history of the island in my next chapter, I will content 
myself with saying that the subject to be discussed 
was, whether the women who, as registered members, 
subscribe their weekly pence to the maintenance of the 
church much better than do the male portion, were to 
be allowed the privilege of voting for the officials of 
their separate churches. 

One venerable archdeacon, whose trite speech and 
characteristic physiognomy is well known in this town, 
waxed most eloquent upon the virtues of the " enfran- 
chised she." Another worthy, with an equal love of 
justice, declared that " but for the women, the churches 
could not exist in Jamaica," and said it was simply 
justice to give them a voice in their church representa- 
tion. The result of the meeting was, however, to post- 
pone the measure for a more convenient occasion ; it 
was thought inadvisable to rush it upon the native 
ladies ; in the meanwhile they could gradually be 
educated up to a more extended view of their interests 
and privileges. Thus, even the weaker sex in this far- 
off island of the Caribbean Sea has been touched with 
a ripple from the wave which bears on its crest the 
emancipation of women from the fetters and gyves 
man, from the beginning of the world, encumbered the 
object of his adoration. 

To-day, in enlightened England, might instead of 
right is still to the fore directly the question is one of 
giving woman her undoubted rights. Man is the same 
inconsequent reasoner. When he finds a woman 
cannot assimilate, or apply what she has learnt so 
quickly as he can himself, he ofttimes forgets the 



POET ANTONIO 203 

shallow education he thought good enough for her, 
though probably the sons were sent to the university, 
and he irritably reproaches her with the fact of her sex, 
for which she is not responsible, and her frivolity, for 
which latter, not having chosen to spend money over 
her education, he is distinctly to blame. 

If she educates herself, and has a mind of her own, 
and finds words to express her views which do not 
always coincide with his own, he sneers at her for 
being a blue-stocking, and declares no man wants an 
opinionated wife. 

The most curious anomalies exist. Women doctors, 
lecturers, teachers, clerks, telegraphists, business women, 
and those who administer their own estates, are denied 
by our enlightened and liberal-minded legislators the 
privilege of voting for parliamentary representation, 
thereby placing them on the same level as the pauper 
and the lunatic, who, I believe, are the only classes of 
unenfranchised male adults. Surely women who pay 
taxes might be considered capable of voting for the 
legislators of their country. 

I had. heard and read a good deal of Port Antonio, 
and intended visiting the place. Hearing some friends 
were going, I agreed to go with them. 

We left Kingston at two in the afternoon, and should 
have reached Port Antonio at six in the evening, in 
good time for dinner, intending to take either a moon- 
light stroll or drive afterwards. 

The first part of the journey occurred without 
mishap. We were just half-way, and it was after 
four o'clock, when, apparently, we were making an 



204 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

extra long stay at a station. Several passengers 
grumbled, peered out, then discovered something had 
gone wrong with the works. This is of such everyday 
occurrence that nobody seemed alarmed. In a few 
moments we learnt, quite casually, that a luggage 
train was derailed in a tunnel 200 yards ahead, 
and as it was a single line to Port Antonio, we 
should probably wait some time before we could 
proceed. 

We must have waited at that God-forsaken spot 
nearly two hours. There was no inn or habitation 
where we could get as much as a cup of tea ! We 
were then told to re-enter the train, which would 
take us to the entrance of the tunnel. We would 
have then to walk through to the other end, where 
a train was now waiting to take us to our destination. 
It was growing dark ; the train crawled cautiously 
down a fairly steep incline, until both engines faced 
each other, only about 20 or 30 yards being left 
between them. The luggage was transferred, and we 
commenced our subterranean walk. 

As we passed the derailed engine, which presented a 
slightly drunken aspect, the heat of the tunnel, com- 
bined with that from the roaring and steaming loco- 
motive, was thoroughly appalling ; at the same time 
the shouting of the officials and the chattering of the 
blacks, who, laden with baggage, pushed past, made 
one think one had "struck" the direct road to the 
infernal regions. Only a narrow, stony footway between 
the rails and the wall of the tunnel made progress a 
matter of difficulty. 



TICHFIELD HOTEL 205 

We were nearly exhausted when we once more 
emerged into the twilight. The train lingered at 
every stopping-place ; it was dark, so we could not 
see the north coast. Instead of six, it was eleven at 
night when at last we lumbered into Port Antonio. 

We had had neither bite nor sup since one o'clock, 
and were fairly famished. To add to our mis- 
fortunes, it was raining in torrents at Port Antonio ; 
no conveyance was at the station. A messenger was 
promptly despatched to the hotel for a " bus." In about 
twenty minutes a couple of buggies drove up in the 
darkness, and whirled us up a steep hill to the only 
establishment the town possesses, where we arrived 
nearly dead-beat with fatigue. We instantly clamoured 
for brandy, or whisky and soda, but found, to our 
dismay, that it was a temperance hotel ! I fear we 
reviled the upholders of that noble cause, but there 
was nothing to be done but swallow cold, weak tea, 
and stay our hunger on the uninviting scraps of meat 
they brought us with much grumbling. Giving us any 
food at all was evidently a work of supererogation on 
their part. We represented that ours was an exceptional 
case, but it is well to learn that the American who 
intends to make dollars, and plenty of them, has no 
time for politeness, nor is there room in his policy for 
the milk of human kindness. 

This was my introduction to the much-lauded 
American establishment known as the Tichfield Hotel, 
which I had heard spoken of as the best hotel in the 
island. It certainly is beautifully situated on a hill 
overlooking the harbour, and the fruit, which is lavishly 



206 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

set before the visitor at every meal, is quite a feature. 
The building is commodious, and cleanliness and 
comfort are decidedly not lacking. 

The sea-bathing here is good and safe, being 
protected from the sea by a coral reef, over which the 
waves dash majestically — a lovely sight as seen from 
the verdure-clad hills. The temperature of the water 
is about 80°. The Americans who patronise it come 
direct here in the United Fruit Company's steamers 
from Philadelphia and New York. In fact, the hotel is 
run by that Company, and at the time of writing these 
lines (March 1903) there is not sufficient accommodation 
in the town for the numbers arriving from the States. 
This is distinctly satisfactory ; the fruit-growing in the 
neighbourhood — for many old sugar estates are now 
owned by Americans — has changed the condition of the 
country from depression into prosperity, which one 
fervently hopes may be still more increased. 

That our cousins on the other side of the Atlantic 
appreciate the island scenery is evident ; those I have 
met in various parts have rapturously extolled its 
beauties, whilst they have taken sorely to heart the 
low state of Jamaican finance. An American magazine 
has an article in which the writer remarks upon the 
island inhabitants most favourably ; he alludes in warm 
terms to their native courtesy and good-nature, their 
smiling civility and gentleness. Comparing the 
behaviour of Jamaican youths with that of his 
youthful countrymen, he writes: "We occasionally 
invite eminent foreign educationalists over here to 
teach us how to teach. If a hundred young Jamaicans 



A HEALTH EESOET 207 

could be invited to teach pupils of public schools 
how to study and how to behave, we could expect 
striking results." 

He is conscious of the reputation of his com- 
patriots for lack of breeding and good manners, for 
he deprecates that feeling amongst the American 
colonists of this town and its environs, which made 
them manifest unwillingness to show civility to the 
Governor of Jamaica when visiting Port Antonio. It 
is amusing to read that the fact remains that no ill- 
bred person, no matter what his nationality, is bound 
to be civil to anybody ; and surely if an ordinary, not 
to say common, American citizen at home may with 
impunity run down the President of the United 
States and then be studiedly impertinent to him, 
a travelling American may be allowed to rise in 
wrath at the thought of being polite to a British 
Governor ! 

However Uas6 the globe-trotter may be, it is im- 
possible for him not to be moved by the tropical beauty 
and restfulness of this spot as a winter resort ; the 
exquisite colouring of the sea, the white surf nearer to 
you, the green verdure of the hills around, and the 
towering of majestic waving palms unite to form this 
a charming retreat for jaded nerves. 

Many persons in returning to Kingston leave the 
train at Annotto Bay, having beforehand ordered a 
carriage to be in readiness, and drive to Castleton 
Gardens, a distance of 12 miles. These are botanical 
grounds, and well worth the visit ; part of them 
are situated on a river, where the cool shade of 



208 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

bamboo arbours forms a pleasant resting-place for lunch. 
Then a further distance of 14 miles or so brings you 
across the island to Constant Spring Hotel. 

I was now desirous of making my last excursion into 
the mountains. Many a time I had gazed longingly at 
the Blue Mountain Peak and Catherine Peak, and I 
now arranged to stay some days at the coffee plantation 
of Mr Sidgwick, Chester Vale, situated nearer the latter 
mountain. 

I was told at the Myrtle Bank Hotel that the ride 
up was fairly steep and would occupy three hours ; but 
any qualms as to one's powers of endurance were stifled 
at birth, when I learnt that an aged lady, of probably 
seventy, contemplated taking the journey with me. I 
had met her in various parts of the island, invariably 
grumbling at the non-existence of electric light and 
other trifles. She should have remained at home, many 
of us thought. For people of that age to attempt to 
travel in an island so remote, and as yet so barely 
furnished with good hotels, is preposterous ; they are 
a terror to those who can get along very well without 
their company, which, at best, is an onerous responsi- 
bility. In this case, I wondered what I should do if 
the old lady fell off her horse in a fit of apoplexy, for 
it was excessively hot, and the places we climbed up 
were enough to try an experienced rider. 

We took the electric tram, first of all, from the hotel 
to Papine, some 6 miles in an eastward direction. 
Here, by the bye, there is a black Lourdes. I did not 
see the dirty pool where a crazed enthusiast, a black 
man, named Bedward, holds forth as to the miraculous 



A BLACK LOUEDES 209 

nature of the water, and where faith-healing is carried 
on & merveille. Negroes having cancers, tumours, and 
other ailments go there and wash. The accompanying 
rites I do not know, for the proceedings take place at 
night, and therefore it is not easy to be present. But 
undoubtedly cures have taken place, so greatly does 
fear, or faith, operate upon the nervous centres of 
blacks as well as whites. The natives take bottles 
containing this miraculous water which everybody, no 
matter what the disease, bathes in, and when a member 
of their family is sick or ill, he or she is dosed with it. 
From Papine carriages were in readiness to convey 
travellers to Gordon Town, some 3 miles of lovely 
winding road away amongst the hills. 

Here we took horses ; our luggage was strapped on 
to a mule's back, and, with a boy in attendance, we 
commenced our three hours' ride. The way led over 
bridges through a defile, then leaving the main road 
we ascended a good bridal path which zigzagged up 
the face of a very steep mountain affording, as we got 
up some 3000 feet, magnificent views of the country 
and harbour of Kingston beneath us. At length we 
gained the summit of the pass, and then our way led 
round circuitous mountains with a deep valley between 
us and another range. All the sturdy mountaineers 
we passed on the narrow path seemed pleased to see 
us. Wattled huts, and occasionally a Chinaman's drink 
shop, were passed ; each new view seemed to be more 
beautiful than the last. At length we gradually 
descended the hill, crossed a bridge, and immediately 
ascended the other side of the narrow ravine. Very 





210 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

soon after, entering a gate, we found ourselves in Mr 
Sidgwick's coffee plantation, which occupied the slope 
of a very steep hill. Another gate led into the garden 
of our host, which could boast of a tennis-lawn and 
terraces. At the back were enormous barbecues and 
buildings connected with the curing of coffee. 

The house itself is two hundred years old, and is 
situated in a basin amongst the hills. It is built in the 
mode so prevalent in the older houses of Jamaica, 
namely, the large central dining-room with rooms and 
kitchen opening into it, and on the storey above, the 
drawing-room, with bedrooms leading into it. Going 
through the house one crossed the roadway, where a 
billiard-room and a wing containing ten bedrooms were 
in course of erection, for, in the summer months, there 
is an exodus to the hills from Kingston, by those who 
can afford the change. We had fires every night, and 
a most genial and happy house-party we were, when 
the grumblesome old dame had departed, playing whist 
and bridge, and enjoying the treat of a really good 
piano. The food in these remote regions is excellent, 
notwithstanding that most of it has to be carried up 
from Kingston. 

I cannot describe the charm of the walks and rides 
to be taken in this mountainous region. The ascent to 
Catherine's Peak is by no means arduous, but the path 
up to the summit is to be found with some difficulty 
owing to the luxuriant growth of the wild ginger, ferns 
and other plants. The ever-changing lights on the 
verdure-clad sides of the Blue Mountains is a wonderful 
sight for an artistic eye, whilst torrents and streams, 






BLUE MOUNTAIN SCENERY 211 

hidden by the great masses of trees, ferns, and 
plants of all description, fall into the narrow valleys. 
It is only the pedestrian who can fully grasp the great 
wealth of greenery everywhere. The tree ferns grow 
to great height amongst the mountains where the 
sunlight does not penetrate. Wild heliotrope, orchids, 
wild oleander, begonias, one can pick as one wanders 
along. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE CHUKCH OF ENGLAND IN JAMAICA — ITS DISESTAB- 
LISHMENT, ITS INCREASED ACTIVITY AND DEVELOP- 
MENT 

In briefly reviewing the past history, and in contem- 
plating the present state of the Church of England 
in this colony, there are no words which present 
themselves to my mind with greater significance than 
do those of Euskin. He says: "There are two ori- 
flammes : which shall we plant on the furthest islands ? 
— the one that floats in heavenly fire, or that which 
hangs heavy with foul tissue of terrestrial gold ? We 
have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we 
must now either finally betray, or learn to defend 
by fulfilling. And we are rich in an inheritance of 
honour bequeathed to us through a thousand years 
of noble history." That we have not betrayed that 
trust in this colony there is ample evidence, and that 
the bright inheritance of honour remains untarnished, 
the very existence of an active, flourishing, and self- 
supporting Church in Jamaica testifies, in spite of the 
dark days and difficult times it has lived through 
since its disestablishment in 1870. 

212 



ENGLISH CONQUEST OF JAMAICA 213 

To understand the somewhat complicated history 
of Anglicanism in these parts, it will be profitable to 
revert to the time when Cromwell, in fitting out the 
expedition commanded by Penn and Venables to crush 
the Spanish power in the West Indies in 1655, 
despatched seven ministers of religion at the same 
time. That stern Puritan and sound statesman could 
not brook the overbearing pride of Spain, nor was 
he inclined to submit to the Spanish pretensions 
with the tameness with which the vacillating 
Stuart kings had viewed the policy of aggrandize- 
ment pursued by that State. Its maritime power 
menaced his commerce on the high seas ; doubtlessly 
its very existence troubled his Puritan and mystical 
conscience. 

Whether the expedition which Carlyle speaks of 
as " the unsuccessfulest enterprise Oliver Cromwell 
ever had concern with," resulting in our gaining 
possession of Jamaica, was the outcome of his 
foreign policy or of religious motives, is not 
quite clear, but we know that the general who suc- 
ceeded Venables drew up a formal request, asking 
that "godly, sober and learned ministers" should be 
sent out to them, prefacing his request with the 
words, " Forasmuch as we conceive the propagation 
of the Gospel was the thing principally aimed and 
intended in this expedition." Commending General 
Fortescue for his "faithfulness and constancy in the 
midst of other's miscarriages," the Protector, alluding 
to the reproof of God given them in their repulse at 
St Domingo, characteristically bewails the reports he 



214 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

has received of their avarice, pride, and debauchery, 
and hopes that a special regard may be so exercised, 
that virtue and godliness may receive due encourage- 
ment, etc. 

Whatever zeal for religion the conquerors possessed 
apparently exhausted itself in iconoclastic outbursts 
similar to the manner in which the Independents in 
England earned for themselves immortal obloquy in 
the mutilation of sacred buildings. Here the victorious 
soldiers destroyed every Eoman Catholic place of wor- 
ship in the island. 

About this time heavy mortality thinned the troops ; 
but the land became repeopled by Cromwell's coercive 
Irish campaigns. Two thousand men and women 
were shipped to Jamaica, whilst in Scotland the 
sheriffs had orders to "apprehend all known idle, 
masterless rogues and vagabonds, male and female, 
and transport them to the island." The Spaniards, 
noting the ravages which sickness was making in the 
troops of their victors, made a futile attempt to 
regain the island, but General D'Oyley defeated them 
in 1658 at Eio Nuevo. 

In 1666, with the accession of the Merry Monarch, 
Lord Windsor took measures for the encouragement 
of an orthodox ministry. Laws were passed regulat- 
ing ecclesiastical matters and providing liberally for 
clerical support, all colonies and plantations being 
then within the episcopal jurisdiction of the Bishop 
of London. 

In 1681, and afterwards, instructions to successive 
governors declared that " no minister be received in 



SLAVE-OWNERS' CHURCH VIEWS 215 

Jamaica without license from the Eight Rev. the 
Lord Bishop of London." But the Jamaica Assembly, 
which sat two hundred and two years, appreciat- 
ing the security at which their distance from 
Whitehall gave them, were by no means a mild 
and docile legislative body. The absurdity of not 
being able to get rid of an undesirable clergy- 
man, without the permission of a bishop residing 
4000 miles away, caused the passing of an Act 
which questioned the right of the Bishop of London 
to suspend either ab officio, or a beneficio, from the 
island. 

Thus at the close of the seventeenth century the 
State Church in Jamaica was firmly established on 
a legal basis. In a history dealing with ecclesiastical 
matters of this period, it appears that the Church 
was regarded by the Assembly who voted the neces- 
sary funds for its maintenance as a respectable and 
ornamental adjunct of the State. Possibly if the 
clergy had shown great signs of missionary zeal, 
its very existence would not have been tolerated. 
Apparently at this date they ministered almost 
solely to the whites. The legislators who voted 
supplies were almost all of them planters, there- 
fore slave-owners. They were, one would imagine, 
sufficiently intelligent to perceive that Christian 
teaching, if spread amongst the blacks, would inevit- 
ably tend to produce discontent and a sense of ill- 
treatment. Probably they would have sympathised 
with Lord Melbourne, who, at a later date, accident- 
ally found himself listening to an evangelical sermon, 



216 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

in which sin and its consequences were sternly 
depicted, when he expressed his disgust in these 
words : " Things have come to a pretty pass when 
religion is allowed to invade the sphere of private 
life." That the condition of the Church in Jamaica 
was deplorable during the eighteenth century is 
undoubtedly true, although there were here and there 
bright examples of a higher standard of life than 
ordinarily prevailed. In Long's " History," written in 
1774, we read that there were seldom wanting 
some who "were equally respectable for their learn- 
ing, piety, and exemplary good behaviour, others 
have been detestable for their drinking, gambling, 
and iniquity." He further declares that "some 
labourers of the Lord's vineyard have at times been 
sent who were much better qualified to be re- 
tailers of salt-fish, or boatswains to privateers, than 
ministers of the Gospel." Another writer, speak- 
ing of the clergy, says they were "of a character so 
vile that I do not care to mention it." Without 
enlarging further on the wickedness prevailing in 
Jamaica, it will be but fair to remember what was 
the tone of society in England at this epoch, and 
we assuredly do not err when we say that in 
Georgian times religion had reached its low water- 
mark. 

In the days of Erastianism when a bishop was 
enthroned by proxy, chosen because he could play a 
good hand at cards, or because he was bear-leader to 
some scion of aristocracy, or, like Blomfield or Marsh, 
good controversialists who could toss a Calvinist, 



LOW STATE OF MOKALS 217 

or gore an Evangelical, one could scarcely imagine 
such worthy successors of the Apostles, as they drove 
to Court functions (even the most impecunious of 
them) in their carriages with four horses, or dis- 
cussed the latest scandal over the port that stocked 
the episcopal cellars, taking great trouble to select 
fitting men for curacies in a remote island they were 
never likely to set foot on. 

The low state of morals amongst both clergy and laity 
in England in the eighteenth century is notorious. The 
poor were left in a state of ignorance and degradation 
which, in these days, it is difficult to credit. Decency 
was scarcely known. Profligacy reigned in the highest 
circles of society. In Lord Holland's " Memoirs of the 
Whig Party " we read that at the wedding of the heir- 
apparent he was so drunk that his attendant dukes 
could scarcely support him from falling. In Georgian 
times the conversation and jokes of the first gentlemen 
in Europe were such that would disgrace a self-respecting 
stableman in these days, whilst the drinking bouts of 
the age exceeded anything known in English history 
previously. Sir George Trevelyan's lines describe the 
situation so aptly that I cannot refrain from quoting 
them: 

" We much revere our sires ; they were a famous race of 

men. 
For every glass of port we drink, they nothing thought of 

ten. 
They lived above the foulest drains, they breathed the 

closest air, 
They had their yearly twinge of gout, but little seemed to 

care, 



218 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

But though they burned their coals at home, nor fetched 

their ice from Wenham, 
They played the man before Quebec and stormed the 

lines at Blenheim. 
When sailors lived on mouldy bread and lumps of rusty 

pork, 
No Frenchman dared to show his nose between the Downs 

and Cork." 

The conscience of the British nation slumbered 
peacefully until at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, " in the teeth of clenched antagonisms," the 
revivalistic preaching of the Evangelicals produced a 
marked change on religious thought and life : decency 
once more became fashionable. Extravagance in dress, 
and in the mode of living, was put down in many of the 
houses of the great nobles. Clerical iniquities, such as 
the holding of pluralities, leaving secluded country 
spots practically heathen, were enquired into and abuses 
remedied. That the change which had come over the 
face of things was due to the ghastly tragedies which 
took place on the other side of the channel, the whole- 
sale slaughter of the French royalty and aristocracy, the 
tearing up by the roots of all religion and order 
culminating in the storming of the Bastille by a 
ferocious mob, is the verdict of no less an authority 
than Mr Gladstone, who wrote as follows : " I have heard 
persons of great weight and authority, such as Mr 
Grenville and also, I think, Archbishop Howley, ascribe 
the beginnings of a reviving seriousness in the upper 
classes of lay society to a reaction against the horrors 
and impieties of the first French Eevolution in its later 
stages." In another passage taken from " The Dinner- 



EMANCIPATION BILL 219 

bell of the House of Commons," we can feel even to-day- 
how intense the shock must have been throughout the 
civilised world, and how great the impetus given to 
mend their ways by the demoniacal proceedings in 
France: "A voice like the Apocalypse sounded over 
Europe, and even echoed in all the courts of Europe. 
Burke poured the vials of his hoarded vengeance into 
the agitated heart of Christendom, and stimulated the 
panic of a world by the wild pictures of his inspired 
imagination." 

This was a transitional time in English national life ; 
that it was bloodless may be ascribed to the solid 
sense and law-abiding temperament of the Anglo- 
Saxon race. Men like George Eliot's immortal 
creation, "Edgar Tryan of Milby," battled with the 
quiescent worldliness of an unenthusiastic episcopate. 
In the ardour of their convictions they depicted 
in glowing language the consequences of unrepented 
sin. Their enthusiasm and uncompromising devotion 
to their principles brought home to the awaken- 
ing nation the horrors of the traffic in human flesh. 
Their very narrowness gave intensity and concen- 
tration to their work, the crowning glory of which 
was the passing of the Emancipation Bill, when the 
country paid twenty millions in cash to quiet the 
newly-awakened conscience, at the same time un- 
consciously throwing into the bargain the commercial 
prosperity of the West Indian colonies. 

To return to Jamaica, we must not omit to mention 
that during the century we have been reviewing 
various dissenting bodies had sent out missionaries to 



220 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

Christianise the blacks. No churchman, however bigoted, 
would refuse to acknowledge the worth of their self- 
sacrificing and devoted labours, knowing well that much 
theological learning and zeal had been diverted from 
the Established Church on account of its unsympathetic 
attitude and inefficiency to cope with such ardent 
souls as the Wesleys and Whitfields of those days. 
Nor were the great Home Missionary Societies callous 
as to the religious condition of our plantations. The 
Church Missionary Society was in the field before that 
for the Propagation of the Gospel. Space forbids one to 
do more than to say that many men who were sent out 
died at their posts, doing their best, and making the 
way easier for those who followed. The first Bishop of 
Jamaica was Dr Lipscombe. He arrived in the island in 
1824, a time when the agitation of anticipated emancipa- 
tion was at its height, many of the planters threatening 
to transfer their allegiance to the United States, or even 
to assert their independence, for they foresaw the 
havoc which the measure would play with the sugar 
industry. Serious outbreaks occurred frequently amongst 
the blacks ; lives were lost, property to the amount 
of £666,977 was destroyed on one occasion. In a 
statement of 1832 we find that during the eight years 
of the bishop's residence in the island thirteen churches 
had been built, nine were in course of erection. The 
diocese numbered forty-five clergy and thirty-two 
catechists, religious instruction being given on two 
hundred and eighty estates. At this time the Church 
was struggling hard to teach the liberated slaves how 
to use their freedom ; and it is noteworthy that during 



TEOUBLOUS TIMES 221 

the festivities with which the emancipation was 
celebrated, extending over three days, no riot, or 
trouble of any kind, is recorded. 

It was during the episcopate of the second Bishop 
of Jamaica, Dr Spencer, that the Church Missionary 
Societies practically withdrew help from this colony. 
The S.P.G. missionary connection ceased in 1865, 
urging in explanation the more pressing needs of 
other mission-fields. In these years the Church 
suffered materially from the withdrawal of financial 
support. We read of closed chapels, dilapidated 
school-houses, scattered congregations ; but there were 
more troublous days in store for it, and indeed for 
the whole island. 

Successive floods and earthquakes half ruined the 
agricultural industries. Cholera carried away 32,000 
souls, free trade had thrown half the sugar estates 
out of cultivation. Thus the depleted revenues of 
the colony, and the fact that nonconformist bodies 
were doing useful work without costing the State 
a half-penny, whilst the Establishment cost the 
island treasury £37,284 a year, were considerations 
which induced the Jamaican Assembly to agree to 
measures of retrenchment, financially affecting the 
clergy, since it was evident that the State subsidies 
were, in view of the reduced revenues, utterly 
disproportionate. 

Later in 1867 Sir J. P. Grant's first act was to 
direct the discontinuance from general revenue of all 
"charges for organists, beadles, and other church 
servants," which meant that congregations were in 



222 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

future to pay church expenses, which seems fair 
enough; but more ominous from a financial point of 
view was that Governor's statement that " no vacancy 
occurring in the ecclesiastical establishment would be 
filled up, until a new scheme for supplying the religious 
wants of the island should be determined on by Her 
Majesty's Government." Thus from 1866 until 1870 
no new men replaced the vacancies left by those who 
died during those years. Here it is necessary to refer 
briefly to the risings at Morant Bay occasioned by the 
excited patriotism and fervid oratory of a man called 
Gordon, who inflamed the blacks by his democratic 
ravings. Froude says : " The crime for which he was 
arrested and hung was that he had dreamt of re- 
generating the negro race by baptising them in the 
Jordan of English Eadicalism." Whether or not 
General Eyre was to be blamed in the prompt and 
vigorous measures he took for the protection of the 
island, at this time, may be open to question, but 
the direct consequence of his action was the surrender 
in 1865 of the old Legislative Assembly and the 
creation of the present Constitution, which is that of 
an ordinary Crown colony, of which Sir J. P. Grant 
was the first Governor. 

It was about this time in England that Mr 
Gladstone introduced and carried his famous bill for 
the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. Under 
the impulse of that feeling, disestablishment and dis- 
endowment being in the air, the movement to place 
the colonial churches on the same footing as the Irish 
was suggested and proposed to most of the British 



DISESTABLISHMENT 223 

dependencies. Some, like Demerara, disapproved of the 
proposals. 

In the case of Jamaica from the standpoint of 
economic reform, apparently, there were good reasons 
for Disestablishment. Prior to 1825 all acts dealing 
with ecclesiastical affairs were permanent, but the 
clergy act of that date had definite terms of duration 
attached to it. Subsequent acts affecting the Church 
were also of a temporary character. At the Dis- 
establishment in 1870 these durational clauses had 
lapsed. Six months after they had been in abeyance 
no attempt was made by the newly-constituted govern- 
ment to renew them, then the English Church in 
Jamaica knew it was disestablished. 

In June 1870 a law was passed regulating the 
gradual disendowment of the Church of England in 
Jamaica. It also enabled Her late Majesty in due 
time to incorporate by charter the properly appointed 
representatives of the Church, after which incorporation 
the Governor had power to vest in that body all 
church property belonging to any rectory or curacy 
becoming vacant either by death or resignation, etc. 
It also secured the continuance of their stipends to those 
of the clergy who should continue in the due discharge 
of their ecclesiastical duties as members of the 
Voluntary Communion. 

This year the thirty-fourth Synod was held accord- 
ing to Law 30 of 1870. In 1890 the results of its 
deliberations were summarised in a volume containing 
forty-five canons. I need scarcely refer to the times 
of commercial depression the West Indies have ex- 



224 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

perienced to indicate the difficult and uphill work which 
lay before Bishop Courtenay and his successors in re- 
organising a recently disendowed and disestablished 
church, with State subsidies withdrawn, as well as 
grants from home societies. It was evident that if 
she were to exist at all the Church had only to look 
to herself for support. The question was, " To be or not 
to be ? v Appeals to friends in England, however, met 
with liberal response. The laity in Jamaica came 
forward nobly at this juncture, and gave unstintedly 
their time, advice, and service ; whilst heroic men in 
distant mountain huts and in isolated country mission- 
rooms, living on the merest pittance, devoted their 
lives to the work of the Church. The growing numbers, 
the increasing influence of the clergy, testify to her 
inherent vitality in no less degree than does the 
successful way in which she battled with a sea of 
troubles. Her Communion represents probably the 
largest number of worshippers, including the best edu- 
cated people in the island. 

To my mind, the history of the Church in Jamaica, 
during the last thirty years, is an object-lesson for 
a study on natural selection, and of that expression 
which applies so variously — the survival of the 
fittest. At the present day there are 109 churches, 
122 licensed buildings and mission-rooms, 93 clergy 
licensed by the bishops, 115 honorary lay-readers, 165 
catechists, and there are 261 church schools in the 
island earning from the Government £10,000 per 
annum. 

No one can go through the length and breadth of 



KITCHENER IN THE CHUECH 225 

the island as I have been, without being impressed 
by the fact that the life of a country parson out 
here is only to be lived by a man possessed with 
the missionary spirit. Poverty, isolation, bodily 
fatigue, and countless irritations are his lot. In towns 
it is better ; but the long distances which churches 
and mission-stations lie apart in some districts means 
practically living on the roads. One lady, whose 
husband holds a country living, and who had come 
to Jamaica directly after her marriage, told me she 
had not spent ^10 in the intervening six years on 
her own personal clothing. She was very happy 
notwithstanding, and amused me immensely by telling 
me that generally the loudest singer in church was 
invariably the Obeah man or woman in the district. 
One poor ecclesiastic, with a somewhat weak chin 
on an otherwise benevolent countenance, uttered the 
hardest criticism on Archbishop Nuttall I have heard 
since I have been in the island : 

"The Archbishop," said he, in a tone of asperity, 
" was Kitchener in the Church." I laughed and 
said he "had Kitchenered to some purpose," but a 
semi-articulate growl came from a corner of the 
room, wishing there were a "few more Kitcheners 
about." 

If in England we are inclined to associate 
Anglicanism in a setting of refined aestheticism, or with 
a scholastic environment, the Church of England in 
Jamaica, figuratively speaking, stares us in the face 
with its broad adaptability to the needs of semi- 
civilised negroes, as well as to those of the British 

P 



226 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 



settler. Its claim that we should sympathise with 
its aims, which in the face of discouraging and 
continued poverty it steadily pursues, in uplifting 
a once down-trodden and sinned-against race as well 
as in strengthening and supporting the more favoured, 
is one we must admit, if we possess a vestige of 
the spirit of justice. 

A Wesleyan minister I met recently criticised the 
work of his Baptist brother in Jamaica as " shoddy." 
One can conscientiously maintain there is no shoddiness 
in the work of the Church of England in this island 
to-day. 

True, its energies are cramped, its charitable works 
stunted for lack of funds, but the spirit of growth, 
expansion, and adaptability is latent within it, waiting 
only for the necessary means to press on towards 
its high calling. 

To show the position of the Church of England 
from a numerical standpoint, in comparison with 
other religious bodies in 1865, at the time when 
Crown Government under Sir J. P. Grant super- 
seded the old Legislative Assembly, I have copied a 
statistical table from the Eev J. P. Ellis' " Sketch of 
the History of the English Church in Jamaica," which 
shows that a little more than one quarter of the religious 
world in this colony belonged to the State-paid 
Church, supported as it was by ;£7,100 yearly from 
a British Government Consolidated Fund and ^37,284 
from the Inland Government. 






NUMERICAL TABLE 1865 



227 







Average 




Accommodation. 


Attendance 


Church, of England 


48,824 


36,300 


Wesleyan . 


41,775 


37,570 


Baptist 


31,640 


26,483 


Presbyterian 


12,575 


7,955 


Moravian 


11,850 


9,650 


London Missionary Society 


8,050 


6,780 


Eoman Catholics 


4,110 


1,870 


American Mission 


1,550 


775 


Hebrew 


1,000 


500 


Church of Scotland . 


1,000 


450 


TOTAL 


192,374 


128,333 



The census of 1901 placed the population at 745,104. 
The number of registered church members is 33,000 ; 
and if in 1891, when Mr Ellis published his sketch, 
Archbishop Nuttall calculated the probable total 
number of persons actually, or nominally attached 
to the Church of England in Jamaica at 205,941, we 
may be sure that would, in 1903, be a considerable 
under-statement of the correct number benefitted, or 
attending the ministrations of her churches. In 1879, 
when Bishop Courtenay retired from the see of 
Jamaica the staff of clergy numbered seventy-five, 
of whom forty-four were maintained by voluntary 
contributions. To-day there are ninety-three, all of 
whom are supported by the voluntary system, 
excepting three, who still receive payments from the 
old regime before 1865. 

The income of the Church is now almost exclusively 
derived from the weekly collections and from the con- 
tributions of the registered members, the minimum 



228 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

fixed by the synod being threepence a week. Each 
church sends all such monies thus collected to a 
central office at Kingston, from which they are ad- 
ministered. 

I have already referred to the able manner in 
which His Grace, the Archbishop of the West Indies, 
has, since 1880, not only guided the Church of England 
in Jamaica through times of great depression, but 
has also expanded its activities, notwithstanding the 
changed state of its exchequer. Now that Jamaica's 
prosperous star is, we hope, once more in the 
ascendency, let us hope that those successful merchants 
whose money is got from its soil will not forget to 
treat their Church liberally and generously. Here 
I can but repeat what I have said on a previous 
page, one must have a personal acquaintance with 
the colonies, and the colonists themselves, to appreciate 
the way they look to Mother Church to supply their 
spiritual needs. 

If I have digressed too much on these matters 
for the liking of some of my readers, let me appeal 
to that spirit of patriotic fraternity called imperialism 
which recent events in South Africa has set throbbing 
at the heart of English life, wherever the British 
flag flies, and ask them how they can fail to be 
concerned or interested in that which here represents 
the greatest good to the greatest number of King 
Edward's subjects. 

If we are fascinated by the study of racial problems 
— and I confess my own liking for such books as 
Professor Tylor's " Primitive Culture" and W. S. Laing's 



LOWELL'S BELIEF 229 

11 Human Origins " — our anthropological studies and 
ethnological leanings will lead us to perceive that that 
agency which has already, in so short a time, produced 
promising results out of such unpromising material 
in the raw, as the West African devil-worshipping 
black, claims our sympathy. 

Finally, those to whom the " heavenly vision" is 
not a momentary and fleeting phantom, but an abiding 
reality, will not hesitate to extend by money and 
by influence, if they have either or both, the consola- 
tions of a Spiritual Kingdom to their less enlightened, 
or less privileged brethren in the British colonies 
and dependencies. 

In connection with this great subject, I know no 
liner lines than those written by James Eussell Lowell, 
the great American nature-loving poet. Believing that 
divinity, more or less, lies concealed in the common- 
place garb of our humanity, he says : 

" Be noble ! and the nobleness that lies 
In other men, sleeping, but never dead, 
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own." 



CHAPTER XXI 

SIR HENRY MORGAN — LORD RODNEY — EDUCATION IN 
JAMAICA — CAPTAIN BAKER ON THE BRIGHT PROS- 
PECTS OF JAMAICA 

If Jamaica was known as the white man's grave 
in a bygone age, it has now completely changed 
its character. Twenty-five years ago Chief-Justice 
Cockburn declared that " there was not a stone in 
the island of Jamaica which, if the rains of heaven 
had not washed off from it the stains of blood, might 
not have borne terrible witness to the manner in which 
martial law had been exercised for the suppression of 
native discontent." 

I was told only yesterday of the panic-stricken way 
in which the natives learnt of the death of the late 
Queen Victoria. A nonconformist minister, whose 
sphere of work lies amongst the mountains at the 
eastern end of the island, graphically described to me 
how the inhabitants of those isolated parts flocked 
into the nearest towns and to the parsonage houses, 
chattering anxiously together about the death of the 
great "Missus Queen." Some native agitators had 
worked upon their ignorance and credulity, and they 



TIMES OF THE BUCCANEERS 231 

quite believed with the accession " of the new young 
man " slavery times would come again ! 

In the place of native discontent it would, at the 
present day, be difficult to find a more loyal, peace- 
ful, and law-abiding people than this. And yet it is 
not more than two hundred and fifty years since the 
wildest of buccaneers figured upon the scene in 
Jamaica. In a biographical dictionary I note the 
somewhat amusing, though deeply satirical piece of 
information. 

u Morgan, Sir Henry John, buccaneer, born about 
1637, long ravaged the Spanish colonies, took and 
plundered Puerto Bello 1668 ; after a life of rapine 
knighted by Charles II. and made a marine commis- 
sary, died 1690." 

This great freebooter was as politic and shrewd as 
he was unscrupulous and daring. I cannot vouch 
for the truth of the following story, but it is character- 
istic of those days. 

When summoned to England to answer for his 
piratical excursion on the Spanish Main, he offered 
King Charles such magnificent pearls for the adorn- 
ment of his favourite ladies, that any thought of 
punishment was immediately banished from the royal 
brain. Instead, Sir Henry Morgan returned loaded 
with honours to the West Indies. 

But I would like to relate how, by a brilliant 
stratagem, he extricated his ships from a position 
of great danger. In 1654, Maracaibo had been sacked 
by L'Olonnais, another notorious freebooter, but in 
1668 it had regained its former reputation as one of 



232 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

the richest towns of Spanish America, and Morgan 
determined to attack it. Like Santiago in Cuba, it 
lay on the shores of a long bay with so narrow a 
mouth that almost one ship was sufficient to block it. 
Morgan entered the bay with three ships, stormed the 
town and took the fort. It seems that his victorious 
companions were celebrating their success with wine 
in the fort, left by their late enemies, when their 
indefatigable and valiant captain stepped outside to 
see how matters stood. All was silent, but Morgan 
despatched one hundred men into the woods to hunt 
up the late inhabitants, who had betaken themselves 
thither with their money and treasure. They returned 
with thirty prisoners, who were inhumanly tortured, to 
disclose the hiding-places of their wealth. 

The Inquisition had taught the English mariners 
of those days how to rack and how to burn. When 
Morgan, after some thirty days of this cruelty, finally 
sailed away, to his consternation he found the mouth 
of the harbour blocked by three Spanish men-of-war, 
the crews of which had also rebuilt the fort at the 
entrance of the harbour. Full of resource, Morgan 
coolly ordered the plunder and prisoners to be removed 
from his largest vessel to the smaller ships. He filled 
the former instead with gunpowder, pitch, tar, and 
combustibles. He mounted wooden cannon upon the 
vessel and dressed up posts to resemble men. Having 
completed his preparations, he sent word to the 
commander of the Spanish warships saying, unless 
a heavy ransom was paid, he would burn Maracaibo 
to the ground. The reply of the Spanish Admiral 



SIE HENRY MOEGAN 233 

was to the effect that unless Morgan surrendered in 
three days he would pay the ransom in lead. At this 
crisis the great freebooter next morning sailed in 
single file down the harbour, the dummy ship leading, 
in charge of some daring men, who, at a signal from 
their intrepid chief, were to light the fuses and escape 
in a small boat to the other ships. 

When the Spanish Admiral thus saw Morgan's first 
and largest vessel heading directly for him, he 
sailed into the harbour to meet him, grappling and 
making fast his ship to that of his enemy, expecting 
to fight hand-to-hand. Just at this moment the 
matches were applied, and in the noise and confusion 
the Spanish ship could not unfasten sufficiently quickly 
the grappling chains and irons which fastened the two 
ships together in a deadly embrace. The consequence 
was that it caught fire, and, in a few minutes, both were 
blazing from stem to stern. 

Eather than fall into the hands of the buccaneers, 
the Spaniards jumped overboard. The crews of the 
two remaining ships ran them aground, and rushed to 
the woods to hide themselves. However, the fort 
further down had yet to be passed, but Morgan 
executed a manoeuvre which so alarmed the garrison, 
who expected an attack in the rear, that they removed 
their cannon some distance from the fort. When this 
was done, Morgan sailed away out of the harbour, 
his crews jeering at the Spanish garrison, who were 
unable to bring their ordnance back in time to fire on 
the bold and resourceful pirate. 

Passing on to events which took place in Caribbean 



234 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

waters over a hundred years later, one's heart swells 
with pride when one remembers how Lord Rodney, 
of glorious memory, whose statue adorns Spanish 
Town, saved not only Jamaica, but our other West 
Indian possessions in 1782, upholding the honour of 
the nation at a most critical time in English history. 
The American colonies were lost. France, Spain, and 
Holland, our ocean rivals, had united to make one 
great effort to wrest from us our naval superiority. 
At home, Irish patriots clamoured then, as now, for 
what they conceived to be their rights. 

Lord Rodney, who had taken the Leeward Islands 
from France, commanded in the West Indies. He 
had already punished the Dutch for taking part in the 
alliance by capturing the island of Eustachius and 
three millions' worth of stores and money. Burke, 
whose policy somewhat resembled that of the little 
Englanders of these days, notwithstanding his successes, 
had him called home to account for his actions. In 
his absence the French fleet recaptured the Leeward 
Islands and Eustachius, and thereby became the para- 
mount power in these seas. Things became so desperate 
that Rodney was immediately sent back to his post. 
After a mid-winter cruise of five stormy weeks he 
came upon the combined fleets off the mountainous 
coasts of Dominica, In number of ships the fleets 
were about equal, but in size and men the French were 
vastly superior, having 14,000 soldiers on board besides 
the ships' full complement, destined for " the conquest 
of Jamaica." 

For two days the rival fleets manoeuvred opposite 



LORD RODNEY 235 

each other, but during the night of the 11th of 
April 1872, Rodney signalled to the fleet to sail south- 
wards. The French thought he was flying. Instead, 
he tacked at 2 a.m. on the next day. At dawn the 
French were on his lee quarter. At 7 a.m. the British 
fleet, Rodney leading in the Formidable, sailing in an 
oblique direction, cat the French line, thus throwing 
the ships into confusion. They were unable to reform. 
The conflict resolved itself into a series of separate 
contests. The cannons roared all day, the French ships 
one by one either foundered, or hauled down their 
flag. The Ville de Paris, De Grasses' flag-ship, and 
the pride of the French navy, was the last to yield. 
The slaughter had been frightful, 14,000 are said to 
have been killed, besides prisoners. One half of the 
fleet was taken, or sunk ; the rest of the ships, like the 
Spanish galleons after the Armada, staggered away to 
hide their wounds and humiliation. 

Had Rodney received the hasty instructions a 
timorous - hearted Government despatched to him 
before this engagement, which were : " Strike your flag 
and come home,' 5 the history of Jamaica would be a 
very different thing to-day. 

On that ever memorable occasion the combined 
strength of France, Spain and Holland failed to wrest 
from Britannia her sovereignty of the seas. The 
laurels with which the heroes of Elizabethan days had 
crowned her still rested on her brow. Though sorely 
smitten, she could still hold aloft in untarnished glory 
the sceptre of ocean rule. 

It is hard to tear one's thoughts away from the 



236 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

glorious scenes where the history of the great British 
race has been made. I cannot, however, draw my 
remarks to a close on the West Indies without referring 
to another way in which we add to the glory and 
stability of the Empire to which we are proud to 
belong. I am alluding to the education which in 
Jamaica is provided by government for the younger 
generation of this colony. 

By a law passed in 1890, all elementary schools 
must be undenominational, that is, if they are to be 
recognised by the Government, and special attention is 
to be directed to agriculture and manual training both 
in training and elementary schools. At this date, 
schools deemed unnecessary were closed, others were 
amalgamated to render efficiency and economy more 
practical. In 1900, 757 elementary schools, including 
infant schools, received grants from Government. 
Children from six to fourteen years attend. Grants 
are given according to marks gained at examina- 
tions and on average attendances. Subjects for ex- 
aminations include, besides organisation and discipline, 
reading, recitation, writing, English, and arithmetic, 
also elementary science, the secondary subjects being 
morals, Scripture, drawing, manual occupation, geo- 
graphy and singing. Schools on the Annual Grant 
List are examined by special standards. A registered 
teacher gets in a school of 150 children £30, if certifi- 
cated £36. 

Forty male students are supported by Government 
at the Mico training college to be trained as school- 
masters. 



MICO COLLEGE 237 

At Shortwood, in the parish of St Andrew, thirty girls 
are trained to be school-mistresses, also at the expense 
of the Government, which pays the manager of certain 
voluntary training colleges £25 a year each, for a 
specified number of resident students under training. 

The Mico College is one of the handsomest buildings 
in Kingston. Jane, Lady Mico, widow of Sir Samuel 
Mico, a city knight, and member of the Mercers' 
Company, died in 1666, and bequeathed £1000 "to 
redeem poor slaves.'' This sum, invested by the Court 
of Chancery in London property, grew to the large 
amount of £120,000, when, in 1834, Sir T. F. Buxton 
thought the interest might very properly be applied 
to educating West Indian children. Of several schools 
in the West Indies established for this purpose, the 
only one remaining is the Mico College of Jamaica. 
The Government of the island is also very liberal in 
the way of offering scholarships, the best of which is 
one for £200 tenable three years, granted to a candi- 
date who shall have passed in Honour Lists in the 
Cambridge Senior Examination, and who shall fulfil 
the rest of the conditions attached to it. 

There is a Theological College in Kingston, where 
students are trained for holy orders : a very necessary 
institution, for about one-third of the island clergy 
represent the coloured and black element of the 
population. 

Another very useful and charitable institution in 
Kingston is the Deaconess Home, where the educa- 
tion is specially intended for the coloured children 
of a class superior to those who attend the elementary 



238 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

schools, and who are not gratae personae at the ladies' 
schools in Kingston. This is really a work which is 
much needed, since it is unpractical to educate 
coloured men to fill responsible posts, if an equivalent 
effort is not made with the girls of the same class 
to render them companionable and helpful as wives. 
Nurses are trained in this Home, and all good works, 
such as temperance meetings, are undertaken. I was 
present myself at a service held by the Sisters, ex- 
clusively for the sailors who come to this port of 
Kingston. It did one good to see how at home these 
poor fellows seemed with the kindly women who 
addressed them. Each asked for his favourite hymn 
to be sung, and they were in no hurry to quit at the 
close of the proceedings. At a temperance meeting, 
held a few days afterwards, I was present when eight 
of them signed the pledge. Unfortunately, this good 
work is direfully in need of funds. 

In conclusion, I cannot do better than give the gist 
of an article in which the bright future of Jamaica is 
looked forward to confidently, by one who must know, 
far better than myself, the financial attitude of the 
country. The writer is Captain L. D. Baker, a 
Bostonian, the head of the United Fruit Company, 
to whom, in company with Sir Alfred Jones of the 
Elder Dempster line, Jamaica ow T es much of its recent 
return to comparative prosperity. He says to those 
wanting to invest : a Investments in this country are 
safe, if in land for agricultural purposes. Values are 
normal ; titles are as good and as well protected as 
any in the world. Our Governors have been the best 



CAPTAIN BAKER ON JAMAICA 239 

that Britain can give to her colonies. By them we 
enjoy guaranteed safety and success." 

Speaking of the advance Jamaica has made since 
the days of Governor Darling, 1868, Captain Baker 
reviews the benefits the island has derived from each 
successive governor ; he says : " To Sir J. P. Grant 
we owe the irrigation of the parched lands of the 
Spanish Town district. He turned them into a fertile 
plain. We next had Sir Anthony Musgrave. He 
gave the telegraph, and he gave steamship lines and 
railway extensions and general enterprise such an 
impetus that they have not ceased, 5 ' etc. Next came 
Sir Henry Norman, whose " steady brain kept the 
enthusiastic and the erratic man in check, so that 
there should be no regrets." After him came Sir 
Henry Blake, and the writer of this article cannot 
praise that popular Governor too highly : " Ever full 
of indomitable enterprise and push — exhibitions, 
hotels, agricultural societies, agricultural schemes, 
willingly launching out his own money, riding through 
the country hither and thither, stirring up everyone 
that had a bit of enterprise in his nature. He left us, 
throwing his burden at the feet of Mr Chamberlain, 
to be taken up by him." The present Governor, Sir 
A. Hemming, took up the work with equal zest and 
push. He presented the situation to his " double 
steam-engine friend, Sir Alfred Jones, thereby in- 
augurating the direct line, and consummating what 
may be justly termed a grand success for the future 
of the island." It is good reading to hear this suc- 
cessful American business man say that neither he 



240 JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903 

" nor his companies know anything but kindness from 
this Government." 

Jamaica is one of our oldest colonies ; she has been 
rich, but now is poor ; still, with patience, prosperity 
will revisit her shores. What one can say best to 
one's country people is, Come and make her acquaint- 
ance; the beauty of the scenery will repay you for 
your trouble. Her associations with the past will 
kindle your sympathy and evoke your interest. 



f RINTED AT THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND II YOUNG STREET. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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